












Book 


PRESENTED BY 

























QOLUMBIA UNIVERSITY STUDIES IN ENGLISH 
AND COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 

‘'MJ, 


ROBERT GREENE 


COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 
SALES AGENTS 

New York: 

LEMCKE & BUECHNER 
30-32 West 27th Street 

London: 

HUMPHREY MILFORD 
Amen Corner, E.C. 



ROBERT GREENE 


BY 

JOHN CLARK JORDAN 

•i 


Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements 
for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, in the 
Faculty of Philosophy, Columbia University 


/Reto gotft 

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 
1915 



Copyright, 1915 

By Columbia University Press 


Printed from type, September, 1915 


Gift 

Th* TTniTArsHv 

ecr 27 m 


TO 

MY GRANDFATHER 

JOHN DOWNEY 

































































































1 

























































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































This Monograph has been approved by the Depart¬ 
ment of English and Comparative Literature in Columbia 
University as a contribution to knowledge worthy of 
publication . 


A. H. THORNDIKE, 
Executive Officer . 


\ 


PREFACE 


Robert Greene has been written about profusely. 
“More time and trouble have been bestowed than one cares 
to remember,” complained the late Mr. Collins as he laid 
down his editor’s pen. So much, indeed, has been done, 
so various have been the researches as to Greene’s sources, 
his literary relationships, his friendships and his quarrels, 
his sinning and repenting, that one who desires to study him 
must go over a vast amount of material. There is the fur¬ 
ther difficulty that a few sensational remarks in Greene’s 
writings have been given such emphasis as to withdraw at¬ 
tention from certain other aspects of his works and to obscure 
what is of more importance. I have tried to present a com¬ 
prehensive treatment, based upon the investigations of pre¬ 
vious writers and developed by what I have been able to add 
of my own. 

In the personality of Greene, and in the nature of his 
activity, there is considerable to stir the imagination, and 
to invite criticism and evaluation. These two elements, the 
human and the literary significance of Greene’s work, I have, 
therefore, sought to bear in mind. Thus submitting Greene 
to analysis, I have found the outlines of his character as a 
man of letters to be rather sharply drawn. Sharply enough, 
I think, to be permanent. New facts will be added, new 
sources discovered. But these will only help to make the 
portrait a little more distinct. They will not, I believe, 
change our fundamental idea of the man or of his attitude 
toward literature. 

To those scholars who have made my work possible I 
acknowledge my indebtedness. Especially have I benefited 


IX 


X 


PREFACE 


from the labors of Dr. Samuel Lee Wolff, whose contribu¬ 
tions to the knowledge and understanding of Greene have 
been of great value. To the librarians of Columbia Univer¬ 
sity, and to Miss Jennie Craig and her assistant, Miss Olive 
Paine, of the English Seminar Library of the University of 
Illinois, I give my thanks for generous help. To my wife I 
owe much for criticism and for preparation of the manuscript 
for the press. 

It is a pleasure to express my appreciation for the obliga¬ 
tions I am under to the Department of English and Com¬ 
parative Literature at Columbia University: to Professor 
G. P. Krapp; to Professor J. B. Fletcher, who has offered 
many valuable suggestions. To Professor A. H. Thorndike, 
in whose mind my work had its inception, and whose counsel 
and letters have aided me greatly, I feel sincere gratitude. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Introduction. 1 

II. Omne Tulit Punctum. 9 

III. Sero Sed Serio. 53 

IV. Nascimur Pro Patria. 82 

V. The Poetry.127 

VI. Chronology of the Non-Dramatic Work . . . 164 

VII. The Plays .174 

VIII. Conclusion. 201 

APPENDICES 

I. Tabulation of the Framework Tales .... 207 

II. Misconceptions Concerning Greene.211 

III. Early Allusions to Greene. 215 

Bibliography.221 


Index . 


227 
































































ROBERT GREENE: A STUDY 

CHAPTER I 
INTRODUCTION 

Robert Greene was baptized in Norwich 1 on July 11, 
1558. 2 He died in London, September 3, 1592. Of the life 
that extended between these dates there is little of actual 
record. On November 26, 1575, Greene was matriculated 
as a sizar at St. John’s Cambridge. From that college he 
received his primary degree in 1578. 3 In 1583, July 7, he 
was at Clare Hall, 4 where he was granted the degree of Mas¬ 
ter of Arts. Sometime in 1585 or ’86 he was married. 
Oxford conferred a degree in July, 1588; so that he was 
henceforth the Academiae Utriusque Magister in Artibus of 
which he was so vain. The facts which I have enumerated, 

Note — All references unless otherwise stated are to Grosart’s 
edition to the Complete Works of Robert Greene , 15 vols. 8vo. 1881-3. 
Huth Library Series. 

1 Greene himself speaks of the “Cittie of Norwitch, where I was bred 
and borne,” ( Repentance , Vol. XII., p. 171) and he sometimes added 
Norfolciensis to his name. See Epistle Dedicatory to Lodge’s Euphues, 
his Shadowe, signed “Rob. Greene Norfolciensis.” (Lodge’s Complete 
Works, Vol. II. Printed for Hunterian Club, 1883); also Epistle Dedi¬ 
catory to A Maiden’s Dreame, signed “R. Greene, Nordovicensis.” 
Vol. XIV., p. 300. 

2 Register of St. George, Tombland. See J. C. Collins’ edition of 
Greene’s Plays and Poems, 1905, Vol. I., p. 12. 

3 University Register. 

4 “From my Studie in Clarehall the vij of Julie.” The Epistle to 
the second part of Mamillia. Vol. II., p. 143. 

1 



2 


ROBERT GREENE 


together with the records on the Stationers’ Register and 
the title-pages of his works, are all that we have that can be 
dated. 

Greene talked about himself; others talked about him. 
And so, while his life can never be known exactly or in de¬ 
tail, his comings and goings, the events of his existence in 
the capital, the man that he was can be perceived with more 
vividness than can most of his fellows. From his own works, 5 
and from the bitter controversy which arose after his death, 
with the harsh words that passed back and forth between 
Harvey and Nashe, 6 we can learn much of how Greene looked 
and acted. 

“A jolly long red peake, like the spire of a steeple,” says 
Nashe, 7 “hee cherisht continually without cutting, whereat 
a man might hang a Jewell, it was so sharp and pendant.” 
. . . “A very faire Cloake,” he had, “with sleeves, of . . . 
greene; it would serve you as fine as may bee” — this to 
Gabriel Harvey, the ropemaker’s son—“if you bee wise, 
play the good husband and listen after it, you may buy it 
ten shillings better cheape than it cost him. By S. Silver, 
. . . theres a great many ropes go to ten shillings. If you 
want a greasy pair of silk stockings also, to show your selfe 
at the Court, they are there to be had too amongst his 
moveables.” 

“Hee inherited more vertues than vices,” says Nashe 
again. “Debt and deadly sinne, who is not subject to? with 
any notorious crime I never knew him tainted.” . . . “A 
good fellowe he was;” considerable of a drinker. “Hee 
made no account of winning credite by his workes, ... his 

5 The Repentance and various of the Prefaces. 

6 In his Introduction to the Works of Thomas Nashe, Vol. V., Mr. 
Ronald B. McKerrow has a most excellent account of this quarrel. 
The subject is there treated exhaustively and finally. 

7 Foure Letters Confuted. Ed. McKerrow, Vol. I., p. 287. 


INTRODUCTION 


3 


only care was to have a spel in his purse to conjure up a 
good cuppe of wine with at all times.” . . . “Why should 
art answer for the infirmities of maners? Hee had his 
faultes, and thou thy follyes.” 

The young Bohemians lived hard in those days. And 
they died hard. Greene was only thirty-four when he went 
to that “fatall banquet of Rhenish wine and pickled hearing 
(if thou wilt needs have it so).” 8 All through the month of 
August Greene was ill, at first taking no alarm. He got his 
Blacke Bookes Messenger ready for the press, and told his 
plans for the Blacke Booke itself. 9 Then gradually, as the 
days wore on, he came to realize that he could never be well. 
He was greatly troubled in his mind. If he could only pray, 
he would be happy. But there was a voice ringing in his 
ears, “Robin Greene, thou art damned.” He tried to find 
comfort in the hope of God’s mercy, and be pacified. But 
the battle went on. Sometimes he hoped, sometimes he 
feared. “There was one theef saved and no more, there¬ 
fore presume not; and there was one saved, and therefore 
despair not.” 

The last night came. “He walked to his chaire and back 
againe the night before he departed,” writes the printer of 
the Repentance , 10 “and then (being feeble) laying him downe 
on his bed, about nine of the clocke at night, a friende of his 
tolde him, that his Wife had sent him commendations, and 
that shee was in good health: whereat hee greatly rejoiced, 
confessed that he had mightily wronged her, and wished that 
hee might see her before he departed. Whereupon (feeling 
his time was but short) hee tooke pen and inke, & wrote her 
a Letter to this effect. 

“Sweet Wife, as ever there was any good will or friendship 
betweene thee and mee see this bearer (my Host) satisfied of 

8 Gabriel would have it so, and the banquet is immortal. 

8 Vol. XI., p. 5. 10 Vol. XII., p. 185. 


4 


ROBERT GREENE 


his debt: I owe him tenne pound, and but for him I had 
perished in the streetes. Forget and forgive my wronges 
done unto thee, and Almighty God* have mercie on my soule. 
Farewell till we meet in heaven, for on earth thou shalt 
never see me more. 

This 2 of September. 

1592 

Written by thy dying Husband. 

Robert Greene.” 11 

Greene ended his days in poverty. 12 His friends deserted 
him, and he was left alone. He would indeed have died in 
the streets had not the shoemaker of Dowgate and his wife 
taken care of him, — a task in which they were assisted by 
the mother of Greene’s illegitimate son. 

Such was the manner of his death on the third of Septem¬ 
ber. Mrs. Isam crowned him with a garland of bay leaves, 
and on the following day they buried him. 13 

“Oh Robin Greene, and unfortunate because thou art 
Robin!” Greene would have said of one of the unhappy 
creatures of his imagination. Let us say it of him; there is 
none it fits better. 

With all its sadness — with all its morbidness and senti¬ 
mentalism, some would say — Greene’s death was not a 
tragedy. It does not arouse profound emotion. No manner 
of death could do that for him. His life had not been big 

11 This letter is given by Harvey in practically the same form in 
his Foure Letters, and certaine Sonnets: Especially touching Robert 
Greene, and other parties, by him abused. Harvey’s Works. Ed. 
Grosart. Vol. I., p. 171. 

12 Nashe denies this: “For the lowsie circumstance of his poverty 
before his death, and sending that miserable writte to his wife, it 
cannot be but thou lyest, learned Gabrieli.” Ed. McKerrow. Vol. 
I., p. 287. 

13 Greene was buried in the New Churchyard, near Bedlam. 


INTRODUCTION 


5 


enough. His character had been too much of the surface, 
rather than of the depth. He had lived for the day that 
was passing, nor heeded that eternity would come. We 
need not revile him as base, believing the words that he ut¬ 
tered in his despair or remembering only his ill-starred an¬ 
tagonism to a greater, but a fellow, dramatist; we need not 
apologize for his shortcomings, in order to say that Greene 
was not of the strong. He was weak; he was superficial. 
But we can feel a genuine sympathy for him, and a regret 
that his life should have ended so miserably. 

There is a statement of his, made on his deathbed, which 
represents pretty well the life of the man in its activities and 
its remorse. It shall serve us here to introduce the purpose 
of this volume. “Many things I have wrote to get money.” 1 * 
Greene was a man of letters, and as such I shall try to pre¬ 
sent him. Whatever literary form he took up, it was for 
exploitation; whatever he dropped, it was because the 
material or the demand was exhausted. He did what no 
man before him in England had done so extensively: he 
wrote to sell. 

“Povertie is the father of innumerable infirmities.” That 
was Greene’s view of the task. We of today can scarcely 
appreciate the difficulty. Literature is inseparably linked 
with the material conditions which make it possible. In 
the success of our modern professional writers, we forget 
that this relation has always existed, that it was a new 
thing in the reign of Elizabeth for a man to place his 
“chiefest stay of living” in an inkhorn and a pen. Greene, 
however, did so for several years. We have thirteen 
volumes of his work as the product of his industry. What 
shall we say of them and of him? 

In 1599 one Fastidious Brisk, coxcomb and gallant, was 
boasting of the elegance of his mistress’ language, 

14 Greenes Vision. Vol. XII., p. 195. 


6 


ROBERT GREENE 


“Oh, it flows from her like nectar, . . . she does observe 
as pure a phrase, and use as choice figures in her ordinary 
conferences, as any be in the Arcadia.” 

From Carlo, the jester, Fastidious got this rebuff, 

“Or rather from Greene’s works, whence she may steal 
with more security.” 15 

Whether or not Carlo’s sly reflection upon the culture 
of Fastidious’ lady was meant as a disparagement 
upon the works of Greene, it does suggest that character¬ 
istic which impresses most of Greene’s readers, namely, 
his productivity as compared with his contemporaries. 
For Greene was the most prolific of all the Elizabethan 
writers. 

He was the most versatile, too. No other man in the 
Elizabethan period attempted so many different kinds of 
work. Greene did all that the rest did, and more. Drama, 
poetry, framework tales, romances, social pamphlets, trea¬ 
tises, prodigal-son stories, repentances, — all these flowed 
from his pen with a rapidity that is amazing. “In a night 
& a day would he have yarkt up a pamphlet as well as in 
seaven yeare,” his friend Nashe tells us, “and glad was that 
Printer that might bee so blest to paye him deare for the 
; very dregs of his wit.” Greene wrote only twelve years, 
and he had but come into his prime when he died. Yet the 
range of his activity was far greater than many another 
man attains to in a lifetime. I am not saying that, although 
Greene excelled his contemporaries in the matter of versa¬ 
tility, he at the same time excelled them individually in any 
one type of work. He wrote no romance worthy to rank 
with the Arcadia; he composed nothing which in charm of 
style is to be compared with Lodge’s Rosalynde. But it is 
not to be denied that Greene did have ease in writing, and 


16 Every Man Out of His Humour. Act III. Sc. I. 



INTRODUCTION 7 

that he turned his hand to various tasks with about the same 
degree of proficiency. 

Fertility and versatility are Greene’s most obvious dis¬ 
tinctions. He manifests, along with these, a third. In 
spite of his artificiality of style, his shallowness of characteri¬ 
zation, his inconsistencies of plot, his lack of seriousness, 
which are real defects, Greene exhibited a freedom of liter¬ 
ary art; and although he never, even to the end of his 
career, ceased to shout morality from his title-pages, yet in 
practice he came to have an almost complete enfranchise¬ 
ment from the traditions of the earlier didactic writers. If 
I may be permitted to restate the idea, I mean that notwith¬ 
standing the conventions of Elizabethan literature in all its 
forms, which influenced no author more than him, Greene 
developed an understanding of the fact that art to be suc¬ 
cessful must not be wholly for man’s sake; that it must be 
partly for art’s sake as well. 

Closely related to this achievement is growth toward con¬ 
sciousness of method. Greene’s work is full of crudities, and 
some of it is not interesting. Emphasis is often misplaced, 
being upon speech rather than upon action. The first half 
of a novel is unduly elaborated at the expense of the latter, 
and episodes in the course of the main action are frequently 
too extended. But beneath the surface, the careful reader 
can perceive in Greene a definiteness of plan. 

The overemphasized story of Valericus’ rejection of Cas- 
tania 16 may be used as an illustration. Though it exempli¬ 
fies all the faults just enumerated, it was meant, — however 
incompetently done — to explain Valericus’ later betrayal 
of Castania. A lady of high degree is in love with a 
stranger who has come to the court. For the progress of 
the story it is necessary that the duke, her father, hear 
of the love-affair. No friend will betray them; an enemy 
16 Carde of Fancie , Vol. IV. 


8 


ROBERT GREENE 


must do it. But Castania and Gwydonius are both in 
high esteem. A rejected lover is the only enemy possible. 
He must be provided early in the narrative, for he cannot 
be deus ex machina . That is Greene’s plan. Valerius’ 
suit is too long drawn out. He might have been trans¬ 
formed from a lover into an enemy with much more de¬ 
spatch. We do not care to listen to all his speeches or to 
read all his letters. The device is not well handled, looked 
at from our point of view. But that there is a device 
at all is reason for commendation. 

It is out of the above four characteristics that our interest 
in Greene arises, and our problems too. His talent, revealing 
itself in these various ways, representing multiform activi¬ 
ties in one body of work, and summing up and expressing 
the ideas and conventions of the age, gives him his place as 
a man of letters and entitles him to a consideration in any 
study of the literary activities of his time. Greene was not 
great, — but a man does not have to be great to be worthy 
of study. 

To the student and critic, then, there comes the task of 
evaluating the product of Greene’s talent. He must de¬ 
scribe, explain, and judge the work which Greene has left; 
and he must show the influences which produced it, point 
out the significance to be attached to it, and portray so far 
as possible the personality back of it. 


CHAPTER II 
OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM 

The motto which I have given as the name of this chapter, 
Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci, occurs upon the 
title-page of several of Greene’s works. There are other 
mottoes upon other works: Sero sed serio, and Nascimur pro 
patria. These three mottoes taken together represent the 
entire output of Greene’s prose. They indicate, too, in this 
order of enumeration, the course of Greene’s development. 
Yet different as are the purposes which they indicate, and 
as are the contents of the pamphlets to which they are pre¬ 
fixed, they are the product of the same writer, and they grew 
out of the same literary past. 

The outlines of Greene’s activity coincide for the most 
part with the three stages of development of which Professor 
Atkins speaks in his chapter on Elizabethan prose fiction in 
the Cambridge History of English Literature, 1 a threefold 
chronological division. Professor Atkins calls attention to 
the fiction of which the fundamental nature is akin to that 
of the moral treatise, and of which he chooses the work of 
Lyly as the chief example. Then, without implying any 
development in the evolutionary sense that one form arose 
out of the other, he proceeds to speak of the new type that 
appeared after 1584 and continued to exist side by side with 
the first, an essentially romantic fiction represented by the 
the Arcadia of Sidney. And finally he characterizes the 
fiction of the last decade of the century as realistic, centering 
in the life of the people rather than of the court, and 
i Vol. III., Chap. XVI. 

9 


10 


ROBERT GREENE 


finding exponents in such men as Deloney and, a little later, 
Rowlands and Dekker. In the ten or twelve years which 
his career embraced, Greene saw English fiction in all three of 
/these stages. He saw it pass from under the sway of Lyly 
and his courtly yet didactic Euphues, through the immediate 
vogue of the romances (though romance was not by any 
means dead), into the phase of realism, the interest in the 
affairs of contemporary life. In all three movements Greene 
had a share. 

Like most other novelists then and since, Greene was an 
imitator and a follower of convention. But his part was at 
the same time active. Not only did he do what he saw others 
doing before him and around him; he also contributed. He 
was a student of the times. Where there was a demand he 
tried to satisfy it. Where there was none he endeavored to 
create it. He merged his own line of interest, as it were, 
with the larger interest of the age; and he both derived his 
inspiration from that interest, and added something from 
himself to make it what it was and what it should become. 
Just how he did these things, and how he was associated with 
the three movements, it will be the purpose of this and suc¬ 
ceeding chapters to make clear. 

At the time when Greene began to write, Elizabethan fic¬ 
tion was still in the first of these three stages of creative 
endeavor. It had passed through the period of translation 
that accompanied the first workings of the Renaissance in¬ 
fluence in every form of English literature, poetry and 
drama as well as fiction, and that always preceded the period 
of original production in those various forms. It had, too, 
only a short time before, been well started in the way to 
original work by the Euphues of Lyly. 

The history of this period of translation need not detain 
us long. It is necessary to state only two facts: namely, 
that the era of translation sufficed for the introduction of 


OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM 


11 


certain new materials, and that it accomplished certain 
results as to style and method. Both of these facts are, 
however, of importance in a consideration of the subsequent 
development of Elizabethan novels. 

The introduction of new ideas manifested itself, in the first 
place, in the influence that arose from the translation of 
various continental works of which Guevara's El Relox de 
Prindpes (by Berners, 1534; and by North, 1557) and Cas- 
tiglione’s II Cortegiano (by Thomas Hoby, 1561) 2 were the 
most significant. The result of such translations as these 
was the quickening of an already present, but older, interest 
in the kind of literature represented by Elyot’s Governor 
(1531) and Ascham's Schoolmaster (published 1570), and nu¬ 
merous other treatises intended for instruction in letters and 
in forms of refinement, into a genuine and eager desire for 
the more cultivated manners and thoughts of social life. In 
the second place, along with the influence of these native and 
infused ideas represented by these moral treatises must be 
considered that which arose from the translations of novels. 
Although the collections of Painter, Fenton, Pettie, and the 
rest, 3 may at first appear to be translations of continental 
stories, both Renaissance and classical, the fundamental pur¬ 
pose of them was not unlike that of the moral treatises them¬ 
selves. For under the form of a story of love or fortune the 
translator proclaimed his moral purpose. 4 It may be that 

2 The translation was frequently reprinted. There was also a Latin 
translation in 1571 by Bartholomew Clerke which was almost as popu¬ 
lar as the English one. 

3 Painter, 1566; Fenton, 1567; Fortesque, 1571; Pettie, 1576; 
Whetstone, 1576; Riche, 1581; etc. 

4 Painter, for example, prefixed a long discourse, sometimes running 
to the length of a couple of dry, uninteresting pages, to each of the 
novels he translated. Those discourses were meant to be somewhat in 
the nature of an argument, but they were designed also to point out 
.the exceedingly great value, and the moral, of the story about to be 


12 


ROBERT GREENE 


these professions of a moral purpose are not to be taken too 
seriously. 5 At the same time, it cannot be denied that such 
collections, of which the ostensible aim was edification, did, 
under the guise of the narrative form, do much to set forth 
new ideas on such subjects as love, friendship, and fortune; 
to enlarge the sphere of emotion; and to combine with the 
influence of the treatises to broaden the standard of culture 
in accordance with the ideals of the more advanced peoples 
on the continent. 

The new ideas of culture which books like II Cortegiano 
represented, and the new and passionate phases of life to be 
found expressed in the Italian novelle, not only, as I have 
suggested, broadened the intellectual and emotional experi¬ 
ence of English writers, but gave to those writers valuable 
lessons in style and method of composition. Beginning with 
what were literally transcriptions, so far as invention was 
concerned, the translators themselves came, by 1580, to have 
a considerable independence. 6 Along with the process of 
translation there went the process of adaptation; and both 

related. Fenton, not content with torturing his tales out of all resem¬ 
blance to fiction by means of his discoursive sermonizing within the 
tales themselves, added, to that, copious remarks along his margins. 

6 In the case of Pettie they are not to be taken seriously at all. 

6 In 1573 George Gascoigne, pretending to translate from an Ital¬ 
ian author, Bartello by name, wrote The Adventures of Master F. J ., the 
first of the English novels. Certain of Pettie’s tales ( A Petite Pallace 
of Pettie his Pleasure, 1576. Ed. Gollancz, The King’s Classics Series. 
Tereus and Progne, Vol. I. Scilla and Minos, Vol. II.) are not by any 
means slavish followings of their originals. Barnabe Riche, in a collec¬ 
tion of eight tales was himself the author of five of them. ( Riche his 
Farewell to Militarie Profession, 1581. Shak. Soc. Pub., Vol. XVI.) 
“To the Readers in generall: . . . The histories . . . are eight in 
number, whereof the first, the seconde, the fift, the seventh and eight, 
are tales that are but forged onely for delight, neither credible to be 
beleved, not hurtfull to be perused. The third, the fourth, and the sixt, 
are Italian histories.” 


OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM 


13 


of these resulted in original production. The significance of 
all three is in the fact that, while the English writers were thus 
following models, they were at the same time acquiring a 
knowledge of prose style. Their independence was far from 
complete, but the knowledge which they got was at least 
valuable in the production of such stories as satisfied the 
instinct for edification, both moral and cultural. 

So much, then, had been accomplished when, following out 
the tradition of narrative form for didactic purpose, Lyly 
wrote his Euphues, the novel with which the first stage of the 
development of Elizabethan prose fiction was inaugurated. 
Euphues, it is well to recall for purposes of comparison a 
little later, is the story of a young Athenian who comes to 
Naples. There he is given some sound advice on the subject 
of conduct. Presently he meets Philautus, with whom he is 
soon on intimate terms of friendship. Philautus introduces 
him to Lucilla, his betrothed. Euphues and Lucilla fall in 
love and the friendship with Philautus is broken. It is not 
long, however, before Lucilla deserts Euphues for one Curio, 
just as she had deserted Philautus for Euphues. Then 
Euphues, a wiser man, having renewed his friendship with 
Philautus, betakes himself to Greece, becomes a hermit, and 
sends forth letters upon various subjects to his various 
friends. 

Lyly intended to write a treatise. His real purpose, as Mr. 
Bond says, 7 “was to string together moral reflections on 
grave subjects, the gathered results of various reading.” Lyly 
was concerned with the inculcation of ideas. Matters of 
education, friendship, religion, love-making, conduct, travel, 
and so forth, he discussed with the seriousness that pertains 
to questions of real moment. These things were vital to him, 
and indispensable. From sources here and there, from 

7 The Complete Works of John Lyly. Ed. by R. W. Bond. Clarendon 
Press, 1902. Introductory Essay to Euphues. Vol. I, p. 159. 


14 


ROBERT GREENE 


Cicero, Plutarch, Erasmus, Guevara, from his own thought, 
too, he collected opinions and discourses on social affairs. 
Some of these he translated just as he found them; some he 
adapted to suit his purpose. The Anatomy of Wyt is, there¬ 
fore, “rather an essay in philosophy than in fiction proper.” 
But it is not wholly so. The compilation thus made Lyly 
cast into narrative form. As such it has serious defects, 
want of action, poverty of imagination, lack of human interest. 
In spite of its imperfections as narrative, however, — in spite, 
one might say, of the very didacticism which called it forth — 
Euphues is a novel, an excellent “prototype of the novel with 
a purpose.” 

Of the style of the celebrated work we shall not speak, its 
structural and ornamental devices — anthitheses, rhetorical 
questions, alliterations, puns; historical and mythological 
allusions, similes from natural and unnatural history, prov¬ 
erbs, set discourses, soliloquies, “passions,” asides to the 
reader, letters, misogynist tirades. All this is too well known 
on its own account to make necessary anything more than the 
mention of it as the conscious effort to please men desiring to 
“heare finer speach then the language would allow.” There 
can, indeed, be only one purpose in calling attention to Lyly’s 
work at all, the purpose, namely, of taking advantage of its 
familiarity to the reader as a means of summing up more dis¬ 
tinctly, perhaps, than would otherwise be possible, the state 
of the novel when Greene put forth his first production. 

(A) Mamillia 

The First Part of Mamillia (lie. 1580), the earliest extant 
work from Greene’s pen, is the only one of his novels (together 
with the Anatomie of Lovers Flatteries appended to the Second 
Part , 1583; and a few elements in the Second Part itself) of 
which the form was cast in the mold set by Lyly. But 
though Greene only once chose Euphues as the model for his 



OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM 


15 


own work, there is no doubt that he wrote Mamillia with 
Lyly's novel, and Lyly’s success, in mind. Mamillia has 
come from the court of Venice to be at her father's house 
in Padua. She receives a letter from a friend at court as to 
matters of conduct. At her father's house, one Pharicles 
sees her, falls in love with her, and wins her affection. Shortly 
afterward Pharicles sees Publia, woos, and wins her. Thus 
treacherously engaged to both ladies at once, and fearing the 
outcome of such faithlessness, he decides to leave the country. 
He does so, leaving behind two faithful women, both of whom, 
in spite of his fickleness, remain constant in their affection. 
Publia in the Second Part enters a convent; Mamillia — a 
radical departure from Euphues — marries Pharicles. 

The plot of Mamillia differs in many respects from that of 
Euphues; still the general plan is much the same. Corre¬ 
sponding to Euphues’ departure from Athens, we have 
Mamillia’s departure from the court to her father's house. 
The fundamental theme of infidelity is the same with sexes 
reversed. This reversal is often carried out in details. 
Euphues goes from home to gain worldly experience. 
Mamillia is away from home in the midst of temptations, 
and goes home in order to avoid them. When Euphues 
arrives in Naples, he is offered advice, which he haughtily 
rejects. Mamillia is offered advice, which she accepts and 
earnestly tries to follow. The reversal is carried, also, to the 
main characters. In Euphues there are two faithful male, 
and one faithless female, characters; in Mamillia there are 
two faithful female, and one faithless male, characters. 
Corresponding to the fact that Euphues met Lucilla through 
Philautus’ introduction is the fact that it was Mamillia who 
introduced Pharicles to Publia. Corresponding to the quarrel 
between Euphues and Philautus when Euphues falls in love 
with Lucilla, there is the falling out between Mamillia and 
Publia when Pharicles and Publia fall in love. Corresponding 


16 


ROBERT GREENE 


to Euphues’ secluding himself at Silexedra is Publia’s entrance 
into a convent. And corresponding to Euphues’ letters, are 
the letters of Mamillia to her friend, the Lady Modesta. 
This definite parallelism is sufficient to show what I mean 
in saying that Mamillia is planned upon Euphues . 8 

Not in form only, but also in purpose, was Greene’s first 
novel written in very obvious emulation of Lyly. Although 
he did not follow the exact type again, Greene began to 
write in accordance with the prominent tradition of the 
time; and this tradition involved not only the form of 
Euphues, but its aim as well. Lyly’s purpose was primarily 
didactic. His method, ostensibly that of narrative, has some 
of the interest which arises from pure narrative. The under¬ 
lying principle, however, is of another kind. Lyly was too 
close to the older school of Painter and Fenton, too thor¬ 
oughly imbued with the newly acquired ideas of the 
Renaissance, to be able to project a work of fiction which 
should be free from the encumbering didacticism of the 
treatise. I do not mean that he should have been wholly 
free from it. The contrast is not between didacticism and 
entertainment pure and simple, but between a crude didac¬ 
ticism which comes from a failure to assimilate ideas suffi¬ 
ciently to secure a true perspective, and an artistic criticism 
of life. A notable work of fiction can never be mere enter¬ 
tainment. But Lyly was so filled with the significance of 
the new culture, and of the refinement and polish of expres¬ 
sion, that he mistook these subordinate for the prominent 
elements. His purpose was not first to create a novel in 
our modern sense of the word, with its artistic proportion 

8 Another very close following of Euphues is the opening part of 
Lodge’s Euphues Shadow , 1592. (The Complete Works of Thomas 
Lodge. Ed. by Gosse, Vol. II.) The latter part of Lodge’s story is 
entirely different, but the opening situation is identical with that of 
Euphues. 


OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM 


17 


both of pleasure and of criticism, but to open new matters 
of polite thought, manners, conversation, to the minds of 
the English court. 

Greene, although he omits Lyly’s element of satire, also 
was aiming at edification. He was carrying on in Mamillia 
the tradition of the treatise. As well as Lyly, he perceived 
the value of refinement in thought, of elegance in expression, 
and of a consciousness of endeavor to make culture a part 
of the life and speech of the English people. That end he 
saw accomplished by Lyly; and he tried, upon the model 
of his predecessor, to bring about the same result. His 
method was narration; his end, instruction. He has given 
us therefore a novel which is not, on the whole, unlike 
Euphues . 9 

This is not saying that we are to attach to Mamillia the 
same significance that we give to Lyly’s work. Although, 
as Mr. Bond 10 admirably points out, Lyly found at hand 
practically all the elements, both of style and content, which 
he combined to produce Euphues, he is nevertheless to be 
given credit as a pioneer in that he first created what is 
worthy to be regarded seriously as a work of fiction. In 
this sense, Lyly’s novel is more important than Greene’s. 
It is the more important, too, on its intrinsic merits. There 
is in it a somewhat firmer handling of the materials, a deeper 

9 In view of such a purpose and such a production, we can hardly 
agree with the statement of Mr. Gosse when he said, in speaking of 
Mamillia, “It is to Greene to whom the credit is due of first writing 
a book wholly devoted to fictitious adventure in prose.” (Hunterian 
Club. The Complete Works of Thomas Lodge. Ed. by Edmund 
Gosse, 1883. Introduction, Vol. I.,p. 11.) To characterize Mamillia 
— the First Part at least — as “fictitious adventure” and thus to 
distinguish it from Euphues, is, it seems to me, utterly to misinterpret 
the nature of the work. 

10 The Complete Works of John Lyly. Ed. by R. Warwick Bond, 
Clarendon Press. 1902. 


18 


ROBERT GREENE 


understanding of motive, a more effective grasp upon the 
meaning of character. Not only this, perhaps because of 
this, it is more mature, more steady in its aim and in its 
method. 

We are not, however, to be blind to the importance of 
Greene’s work, nor to discount it too much from the fact 
that it is directly a copy. Mamillia has most of the imper¬ 
fections of the time, infinite niceties of Euphuistic phrasing, 
tendency to clog the narrative with pedantic speeches and 
conversations, shallowness of characterization. But super¬ 
ficial as it is, it is not ineffective. Publia, Mamillia, and 
Pharicles are more than just the inverse portraits of Phi- 
lautus, Euphues, and Lucilla. For all that Pharicles’ trouble 
of mind over his inconstancy is not, upon examination, 
very convincing, it will endure a cursory reading. 11 And 
if the narrative element is slight (it must be remembered 
that we are discussing the First Part only; the Second Part 
belongs with the romances), it has at the same time a certain 
degree of rapidity. Pharicles meets Publia immediately 
upon his acceptance by Mamillia. The whole situation 
indeed is more cleverly conceived than in Lyly. Philautus 
takes Euphues to Lucilla for the purpose of introducing 
him to her. The introduction is, obviously, to make oppor¬ 
tunity to reveal Lucilla’s fickleness. In Greene, on the other 
hand, the introduction is manifestly accidental. Pharicles 
is walking with Mamillia for the sake of urging his suit. It 
happens that she is going to Publia’s house. Pharicles goes 
along. Inasmuch as Mamillia has just granted her love by 
the time they arrive, we are dumbfounded at Pharicles’ sud¬ 
den passion for Publia. The events that follow, too, occur 
in quick succession; almost before we know it, Pharicles 
is betrothed to both, and off and away to Sicily. 

11 Dr. Wolff (Eng. St., Vol. 37, p. 358) thinks that Mamillia contains 
some of Greene’s best characterization. 


OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM 


19 


The apparent fortuitousness of Pharicles’ meeting with 
Publia illustrates what I think is Greene’s advance over 
Lyly. It shows, on Greene’s part, a realization of what 
narrative, as distinct from treatise, demands. Euphues is 
a treatise which came near being a story; Mamillia is a 
story which retains much of the treatise. Although he 
was striving to imitate Lyly, Greene’s nature led him to a 
slightly different result. He put into a minor relation the 
very things for the sake of which, perhaps, he wrote the 
book, and elevated those which his fundamental interest in 
events inevitably made prominent. Even in his first pro¬ 
duction, when his purpose was to teach, he developed the 
ability, which he was later to develop more consciously, of 
producing work with real narrative art. Omne tulit punctum 
qui miscuit utile dulci. Lyly, it may be said, had stressed 
the utile. Greene found the value of the dulci. Such a 

discovery in those days was no small thing for a lad of 

twenty. 

(B) The Frame-work Tales 

It was one of Greene’s most deep-rooted characteristics 
to write what he thought he would have a market for. All 
through his life he was doing that. “ After I had by 
degrees proceeded Maister of Arts,” we are told, “. . . 

I became ... a penner of Love Pamphlets . . . who 

for that trade growne so ordinary about London as Robin 
Greene.” 12 The statement comes from the supersensi¬ 
tive brain of a dying man, but the truth of it applies 
elsewhere to Greene’s work. Literature was a trade to him, 
an activity to be followed shrewdly in order to be followed 
successfully. 

Fiction, in 1580, was didactic. Greene would therefore 
be didactic. Euphues was very popular. Greene would 


12 Repentance , Vol. XII., p. 17-23. 


20 


ROBERT GREENE 


write a novel like it. Such seems to have been the origin 
of Mamillia. It was none of Greene’s intention, when he 
began, to do more than disguise the similarity between his 
pamphlet and its model. Every one still felt the need of 
being didactic, or at least of pretending to be so, 13 and 
Greene meant to follow fashion and be as didactic as the 
rest. 14 Incidentally he discovered the power of ordering 
events in a way to give real narrative interest. The story 
did not exactly run away with him; but it broke loose. 

There is in Greene’s work a balancing between two pur¬ 
poses. His desire always to be in fashion brought about 
these results,—one coming from his conscious aim to instruct, 
the other developing as a by-product into a freedom of art. 
Mamillia marks the first stage. The romances mark the 
last. Between the two, both in time and in relationship, 
are the frame-work tales which form the subject of this di¬ 
vision of the chapter. 

To the composition of the frame-work tales the Italian 
Renaissance contributed the two elements which character¬ 
ize this branch of Greene’s work. There was the influence 
which came from the Dialogues, like Bembo’s Gli Asolani 
and Castiglione’s II Cortegiano; and which, we saw earlier 
in the chapter, was already felt in England even before the 

13 See an example in the Adventures of Master F. J., which Gascoigne 
concludes in these words: “Thus we see that where wicked lust 
doeth beare the name of love, it doth not onely infecte the lyght- 
minded, but it maye also become confusion to others which are vowed 
to constancie. And to that end I have recyted this Fable, which may 
serue as ensample to warne the youthfull reader from attempting the 
lyke worthless enterprise.” (Gascoigne. Ed. W. C. Hazlitt. Rox- 
burghe Library, 1869. Vol. I., p. 486.) 

14 “I will take in hand to discourse of, (Obedience) that both we 
may beguyle the night with prattle, and profite our mynds by some 
good and vertuous precepts.” Penelopes Web, p. 162. A character¬ 
istic statement of Greene. 


OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM 


21 


time of Greene. In the Dialogue of this type, the purpose 
was cultural; the center of interest was on what was said 
rather than upon what was done,— upon polite conversation, 
discussions upon questions of morality, love, fortune, and so 
forth; and the emphasis was about equally divided between 
the frame-work and the included matter. There was, too, 
the influence of the frame-work tale proper, of the kind repre¬ 
sented by Boccaccio's Decameron. Works of this sort tended 
to minimize the importance of the frame-work and to throw 
the emphasis upon the included stories. The purpose was 
that of entertainment more than of culture. 

We may begin with Morando, the Tritamer on of Love. 
Morando resembles the treatise in its purpose. Perhaps it 
should not even be called a novel at all. The Lady Panthia, 
accompanied by her three daughters and three young gentle¬ 
men, is spending three days at the house of Morando. On 
each day a discussion occurs: 15 first, Love doth much, but 
money doth all; second, Whether or not it is good to love; 
third, Whether women or men are more subject to love. 
Hence the title — after the fashion of the Decameron and 
the Heptameron — the “Tritameron” of Love. Each ques¬ 
tion is debated by one of the young couples. Considerable 
opportunity is offered for a certain brilliancy of conversation 
and repartee; and while there is no action, there is some inter¬ 
est in the development of the characters. By the time the 
three days' discussion is over, one of the young men has 
fallen in love with one of the young ladies. Then all go to 
Panthia's house in town, from where, if Greene hears what 

15 Morando and several other novels of the group are thus examples 
of the dubii, or discussions particularly of the more subtle questions 
of love, which constituted for many decades a very popular amusement 
in polite circles. They dealt with just such topics as are proposed in 
Morando, and were very widespread in the literature of the Renais¬ 
sance, not only in Italy but elsewhere. 


22 


ROBERT GREENE 


success Silvestro had, he will let us have news. Greene 
heard — as he always did in such cases — of Silvestro’s 
success, and so had plenty of reason to publish the Second 
Part . This second part carries on the love affair to its 
happy conclusion. Thus the story forms a setting in which 
are embedded some further discourses, this time not upon 
love, but upon fortune and upon friendship . 16 

Even so brief an analysis will serve to show the nature of 
the work. It can be seen at once that the Tritamer on 
has more story than is to be found in the treatises proper, 
but is yet distinctly akin to them. The purpose of it is not 
narrative primarily, but didactic,—designed to give expres¬ 
sion to, and to infuse into the English mind, certain thoughts 
upon cultural subjects, however conventional those thoughts 
and purposes might be or might become. 

Of all the group, Morando takes the extreme place in the 
direction of cultural intention. Next to it are the pam- 

16 Mr. Hart (Notes and Queries. 10th Ser. No. 5, pp. 343, 443, 444.) 
has pointed out that these discourses are not original with Greene. 
They were extracted by him from Primaudaye’s Academy. Primaudaye 
was born about 1545 of a family of Anjou, and was a man of consider¬ 
able renown in his own time. His works were chiefly of a religious 
nature. The Academy was translated in 1586 by Thomas Bowes as 
the “Platonical Academy & Schoole of Moral Philosophy .” Greene 
frequently made use of Bowes’ translation. The discourse on Friend¬ 
ship (Vol. III., pp. 146-60) is taken from Primaudaye, Chap. XIII, 
“Of Friendship and a Friend.” Ten lines of Primaudaye are lifted 
bodily. “First we say with Socrates that ... (12 lines skipped) 

. . . Friendship is a communion,” etc. The discourse of Peratio 
upon Fortune (pp. 128-39) is from Primaudaye, Chap. XLIV. Greene 
omits Primaudaye’s account of Tamburlaine. The discussion on 
marriage (pp. 164-6) is, incidentally, from Primaudaye, Chap. XLV. 
The sexes are changed, for whereas Primaudaye writes against women, 
Greene is arguing for them. 

After 1586 many of Greene’s writings show large verbal borrowings 
from Primaudaye. 


OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM 


23 


phlets which make up Greene’s largest body of work. These 
are the frame-work tales which have stories within them¬ 
selves in illustration of the ideas brought out in the 
discussion. Closest to Morando in didactic elements is 
Farewell to Follie . 17 Signior Farnese goes, with his wife and 
three daughters and four young gentlemen, into the country. 
There they discuss Follie in a series of discourses and illus¬ 
trative tales. From the fact that the three forms of Follie 
talked of are Pride, Lust, and Gluttony, and from the fact 
that there are seven young people in the company, it is 
surely not unreasonable to suppose with Professor Morley 18 
that Greene had in mind to make the Farewell to Follie a 
treatise on the seven deadly sins. 19 

The title-page of the Censure to Philautus is undoubtedly 
the best comment upon that work: 

“Euphues his censure to Philautus. Wherein is presented a philo- 
sophicall combat betweene Hector and Achylles, discovering in foure 
discourses, interlaced with diverse delightfull Tragedies, The vertues 
necessary to be incident in every gentleman: had in question at the 

17 This pamphlet is often spoken of in connection with the so-called 
repentance novels. The only way in which it can be so connected 
with them (the way in which it usually is connected with the repent¬ 
ances) is by the prefaces. The prefaces, however, have nothing to do 
with the work itself, unless the anatomizing of folly be called “re¬ 
pentance.” So far as the work itself is concerned, it does in reality 
belong with the treatise-narrative group. 

18 English Writers, Vol. X., pp. 94-5. 

19 Mr. Hart (Notes and Queries, Ser. 10, No. 5) cites twenty or 

more passages taken directly from Primaudaye. Among the most 
important of these are the passages on marriage (Vol. IX., pp. 327-8) 
which are taken from Primaudaye (Chap. XLV.) and the Tale of Cosimo 
(Vol. IX., p. 298) which Greene develops into a story from the headings 
of the tale of Menon in Primaudaye (Chap. XLVII.) In no other work 
does Greene borrow so extensively from Primaudaye. In Farewell to 
Follie he also made use of Laneham's Letter (1575). Passage (Vol. IX., 
p. 265) is taken from Laneham (Burn’s reprint, 1821, p. 29, corrected 
by Furnivall in Ballad Society, p. 22. 1871). 


24 


ROBERT GREENE 


siege of Troy betwixt sondry Grecian and Trojan Lords: especially 
debated to discour the perfection of a souldier. Containing mirth to 
purge melancholy, holsome precepts to profit maners, neither unsauorie 
to youth for delight, nor offensive to age for scurrilitie. Ea habentur 
optima quae & Iucunda, honesta, & utilia.” 

The purpose, as can be seen, is similar to that of Castig- 
lione’s work, in this case to set forth the qualities of the 
perfect soldier. The emphasis is only apparently upon 
the didactic; really the narrative elements were more im¬ 
portant in Greene’s own mind. For one-fifth of the 
novel is given to the frame-work and the background — 
the meetings of the Greeks and Trojans, both soldiers 
and women, in a time of truce; and the consequent talking 
back and forth , 20 with the final decision on the part of the 
men to “discover” an ideal member of their own profession. 
One-fifth is devoted to the set speeches such as were found 
in the Tritameron of Love, in this instance on Wisdom, 
Fortitude, and Liberality, the three essentials of perfection 
in arms. And three-fifths are consumed in the relating of the 
“delightfull Tragedies .” 21 

20 Professor Herford (New Shak. Soc. Ser. 1, Pt. 2, p. 186) thinks 
there is some relation between Greene’s conception of Cressida, as she 
is shown to us here, and Shakespeare’s. Greene’s, he says, more 
nearly approaches Shakespeare’s manner than any other version in its 
conception of the heroine. Greene speaks of Cressida who was “tickled 
a little with aselfe conceit of her owne wit” (Vol. VI., p. 166) — a sug¬ 
gestion of the pert, impudent, ingenious Cressida of Shakespeare. 

I think we can agree that there is this similarity between the two 
Cressidas. But I do not believe we can go so far as to say with 
Grosart (Englische Studien 22:403) that “Shakespeare’s treatment of 
‘Troy’s tale divine’ in Troilus and Cressida is drawn from Euphues 
his Censure.” 

21 How definitely Greene meant to convey the impression that he 
was writing a treatise can be seen by his own remark in his preface 
where, attributing the work to Euphues, he speaks of it as a work 
“wherein under the shadow of a philosophical! combat betweene Hector 


OMNE TTJLIT PUNCTUM 


25 


Belonging with the Censure to Philautus and yet going a 
step farther toward an openly expressed delight in the story 
elements are Penelopes Web, dating from the same year 
(1587), expressly a “Christall Myrror of faeminine per¬ 
fection” intended to set forth the virtues of womankind 
in the same way that the Censure sets forth the idea of the 
perfect soldier; 22 Alcida, 23 in which the principal character 
is an old woman who tells the stories of her three daughters, 
revealing three vanities, Pride, Inconstancy, and Proneness 
to Gossip, the “discourse” confirmed with “diverse merry 
and delightfull Histories”; 2 ^tf > lanetomachia, a discussion with 

and Achilles, imitating Tullies orator, Places common wealth, Bal- 
desars courtier, he aymeth at the exquisite portraiture of a perfect 
martialist.” Vol. VI., p. 152. 

22 A part of the title-page reads: “In three several discourses also 
are three especiall vertues, necessary to be incident in every vertuous 
woman, pithely discussed: namely Obedience, Chastitie, and Sylence: 
Interlaced with three severall and Comicall Histories. By Robert 
Greene, Maister of Arts in Cambridge.” 

Penelopes Web has borrowings from Primaudaye’s Academy. (Hart, 
Notes and Queries. 10th Ser. No. 5.) 

23 Brie (Englische Studien, 42: 217 ff.) attempts to determine the 
date of Lyly’s Love’s Metamorphosis on the ground of its connection with 
Alcida. Without raising the question of the date of Lyly's play, I 
fail to see any such intimate relationship between the novel and the 
play as in any way to think the former the source of the latter. Both 
involve metamorphoses, to be sure, but the similarity scarcely goes 
beyond that point. 

24 Storojenko (Grosart’s Greene, Vol. I., p. 95) is puzzled as to what 
should have caused Greene “to change his front so suddenly, and to 
send the shafts of his wit against the very sex which he had always 
so highly lauded.” Storojenko is linking together Nashe’s epithet, 
“Homer of women,” (Nashe’s Works, Ed. McKerrow, Vol. I., p. 12) 
and Greene’s own words in Mamillia (Vol. II., pp. 106-7) where Greene 
sets himself up against the slanderers of women. To be puzzled about 
a seeming change of front is to take Greene too seriously. In the first 
place, speeches against women are to be found in Mamillia itself 
(Vol. II., pp. 54, 221-2), and in other works of Greene. In the second 


26 


ROBERT GREENE 


an elaborate preface on the influence of the planets, 25 con¬ 
taining two tales by Saturn and Venus, each divinity to prove 
that the influence of the other is the more malignant in the 
actions of men,—a theme similar to that of Lyly’s Woman 
in the Moon. 

There are two more novels in the group, Perymedes and 
Orpharion. These are at the opposite extreme from Mo - 
rando. For while there is a semblance of a purpose for having 
a frame-work — in the case of Perymedes to set forth a pic¬ 
ture of contented lowly life; in Orpharion to show a cure for 
love — the stories which make up the novels are told for 
their own sake. This, in spite of the fact that Greene in 
all solemnity declares that Perymedes illustrates “a golden 
methode how to use the minde in pleasant and profitable 
exercise;” and that in Orpharion “as in a Diateheron, the 
branches of Vertue, ascending and descending by degrees: 
are counited in the glorious praise of women-kind.” 

In form, Greene’s Vision is a frame-work pamphlet. But 
the tales are really incidental both in proportion and in inter¬ 
est, although one of them, the Tale of Tompkins , is among the 
most skilful of Greene’s stories. The Vision , being an 
account of a religious experience, may therefore be dis¬ 
place, it is not known that Nashe is referring to Greene at all (Nashe, 
Ed. McKerrow, Vol. IV., p. 14). And in the third place, Alcida is not 
necessarily a misogynic pamphlet. It is not against women in general. 
It is merely against certain faults in women’s natures—simply a 
didactic narrative. 

26 This preface is not original with Greene. He gets it from Pontano’s 
dialogue called Aegidius (Prose Works, Venice, 1519, Vol. II.). “At 
the beginning of Planetomachia, Greene takes over nearly verbatim , 
in the original Latin, seven pages of this dialogue (beginning at page 
168), substituting his own name “ Robertus Grenus” and that of his 
friend “ Fransiscus Handus,” for the names of Pardus and Fransiscus 
Pudericus respectively, wherever these occur in the original.” (S. L. 
Wolff. Eng. St. Vol. 37, p. 333, note. 1.) 


OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM 


27 


cussed in the next chapter among the repentance pamphlets. 
Strictly speaking, two others of Greene’s novels, Never too 
Late , with its sequel, Francescos Fortunes , and Arbasto, 
belong with this group. But for the reason that these two 
novels contain only one tale each, and that in both novels 
the included tales so put the frame-work out of mind as to 
make it entirely negligible, they are best considered in the 
groups where they properly belong, the latter with the 
romances, the former with the prodigal-son stories. 

The interest of these pamphlets for the modern reader is, 
in most cases, in the tales. It is the interest which arises 
from the narrative rather than from the didactic elements. 
This probably was less true to Greene’s contemporaries. 
Although the frame-work is not entirely without significance 
even for us, to them it was, no doubt, the more vital part. 
For Greene imbued it with considerable of the spirit of 
Renaissance thought, and he conveyed through it to his 
readers much that was essentially cultural in content and 
in aim. He was, then, not merely the writer of didactic 
frame-works embellished with incidental tales; he was an 
apostle of the new learning and all that it represented. He 
was journalistic, he made his living by putting out these 
pamphlets. But such considerations do not alter the fact 
that he did much, along with earning his bread, to familiarize 
his readers with ideas of refinement in conversation and life, 
with precepts of morality, with questions of sentiment and 
passion, with discourses on the virtues and vices of mankind. 26 

There are in all more than twenty of the included tales. 

26 For a full discussion of this subject of Greene as an introducer 
of Italian culture see Dr. S. L. Wolff’s article (published in Englische 
Studien, 1906-7, Vol. 37) entitled, “Robert Greene and the Italian 
Renaissance.” Dr. Wolff discusses the influence of the Renaissance 
upon Greene as being of two kinds; that which Greene assimilated 
in such a way as to treat imaginatively in his own work, such as plots 


28 


ROBERT GREENE 


The tabulation of them in chronological order will show in 
the most concrete way possible the range of subject and 
genre. 27 Such a tabulation, however, shows nothing of the 
structure or of the excellence of Greene’s work. It may be 
well, then, to illustrate Greene’s narrative art. 

We may take the story of Tompkins the Wheelwright , for 
example, — Chaucer’s Tale in Greenes Vision (Vol. XII.). 
This tale belongs to the old fabliau type, which is in itself 
well freed from ethical purpose. It is not the aim of the 
type to portray character, except incidentally, or to bear in¬ 
struction. The good fabliau is primarily narrative, consist¬ 
ing always of a well-knit story. It is clear even when it is 
elaborate. Its method is straightforward, ever selecting the 
significant detail necessary to forward the action. It is 
compact, unadorned, effective. 

Near Cambridge lived a wheelwright named Tompkins. 
He fell in love with a dairymaid who sold cream in Cam¬ 
bridge. Her name was Kate. She loved him too, and her 
father consented to the marriage. Kate continued to sell 
her cream. Tompkins became jealous of the scholars at 
Cambridge and finally became jealous of everybody. Kate 
perceived his jealousy and was grieved. She was friendly 
with a scholar whom she asked to rid her husband of jealousy. 
They devised a plan. 

On Friday Tompkins took his wife to her father’s while he 
went to Cambridge. He met a scholar who asked him 
where he lived. He said at Grandchester. Scholar asked 
if he knew Tompkins, the wheelwright. Tompkins said 

and motifs; and that which he used but did not so assimilate — ideas 
about science, literature, education, politics, society, which became 
a part of his mental content and changed his views of life, and adventi¬ 
tious material which enlarged his stock of information and furnished 
literary ornament. 

27 See Appendix I. 


OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM 


29 


he was his neighbor. Scholar said that Tompkins was the 
most famous cuckold in the country, and offered to prove 
the statement the next day when Kate was in town. Tomp¬ 
kins was to meet the scholar at an inn. 

The next day Tompkins bade his wife go to market, for 
he was ill, he said. Then he went to Cambridge to the 
inn. He met the scholar, and they went to a chamber 
window. Tompkins saw his wife sitting on a scholar’s 
lap eating cherries. Then he and the scholar drank 
together. Tompkins was given a sleeping potion, and they 
all made merry, while Tompkins slept. Late at night they 
carried Tompkins home. 

About midnight he awoke and began to rail at his wife. 
Then he saw that he was at home in bed, and he could not 
understand it. He said that he had seen his wife on a 
scholar’s lap, eating cherries. They persuaded him that he 
had been very ill, and that it was all mere fancy. Thus 
was Tompkins cured of his jealousy. 

The Tale of the Farmer Bridegroom in Groatsworth of Wit 
belongs in the class with that of Tompkins. Not all of 
Greene’s tales, however, rank with these two. Some of 
them are poorly done and dull; indeed the fact cannot be 
overlooked that, however popular in its day, much of 
Greene’s work is commonplace to us. But every man has 
the right to be measured by his highest attainments. In the 
final consideration there is this quality which demands 
recognition. When he is at his best, Greene is able to tell a 
story well. He has an understanding of what a plot is, and 
he makes his narrative move. Most of Greene’s work is of 
course impeded by Euphuistic ornament and didactic talk, 
but the story is usually well conceived and developed. 

Entirely different is the tale of Valdracko, — Venus’ Trage- 
die in Planetomachia. Valdracko, Duke of Ferrara, was a 
crabbed man. Though he was just and politic as a ruler, he 


30 


ROBERT GREENE 


was not liked privately. He trusted no one. Valdracko had 
a daughter called Pasylla, who was loved by Rodento, son 
of II Conte Coelio, Valdracko’s bitter enemy. (The love 
affair is long drawn out.) One day Valdracko went to his 
daughter’s room to speak to her. She was not there, but he 
found one of Rodento’s letters and Pasylla’s answer to it. 
He made up his mind to be avenged on the family of Coelio. 

There was a great meeting of the nobles of Ferrara. Val¬ 
dracko asked Coelio to stay after the meeting, and made 
proffer of reconciliation. The proffer was accepted, to the 
joy of the Senate, and Valdracko took Coelio home with him 
to dinner. He called his daughter to him and told her of 
his plan for her to marry Rodento. Pasylla said she was 
willing, Rodento was sent for, and the marriage was arranged 
for the next spring. 

Meantime Valdracko decided to hire a ruffian to murder 
Coelio. Within a few days the ruffian had killed Coelio with 
a pistol. But he was captured, and brought before the 
Senate. Valdracko, pretending great sorrow at his friend’s 
death, ordered the man’s tongue cut out. Pasylla and Ro¬ 
dento were greatly grieved at Coelio’s death. Valdracko 
had the murderer put to death in torment. Soon after, 
Rodento and Pasylla were married with much ceremony, and 
Valdracko spent great sums of money upon the marriage 
feast. 

After five months Valdracko began thinking how he might 
be rid of Rodento. He went to a house of his three miles 
from Ferrara, from where he sent a letter to his cup-bearer 
to poison Rodento, promising great reward. The cup¬ 
bearer carried out the orders the next morning. Within 
four hours Rodento died. Pasylla was greatly grieved. The 
cup-bearer had pangs of conscience. He gave her her father’s 
letter, and died. When Valdracko came home he pretended 
sorrow for Rodento’s death, but Pasylla had vowed revenge. 


OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM 


31 


When he had gone to sleep, she went to his chamber and 
bound him to his bed. She awakened him and killed him 
with a sword. She took pen and ink and wrote out the story; 
then she killed herself with the same sword. 

This tale is distinctly a product of the Italian Renaissance. 
It might well be — and may be, for all anybody knows — a 
translation of one of the novelle. The story is full of Italian 
incidents and motifs: 28 murders, revenge, treachery. It has 
in it passion of love and hate, intensity of movement. That 
the action is somewhat slow in starting must be admitted, 
being delayed by the conventionality of the process of young 
people's falling in love. But once set going the trend of 
events is sure, the movement steady toward the tragic end. 

The principal characters are of course Valdracko and Pa- 
sylla, the father and his beautiful daughter. About Pasylla 
there is nothing of particular import. She is passionate and 
faithful in her love; and she is unflinching in her revenge. 
But Greene does not present her differentiated from the 
type of beautiful heroines who can, on occasion, show a 
ferocious fortitude — the gentle lady murderers so common 
in the literature of the Renaissance. Nor does he imbue her 
with a personality so distinct as to arouse in us genuine 
sympathy for her revenge or for her death. 

Valdracko, too, is only a type. But he is a type which 
comes very near to being a character. He is a man impla- 

28 “The story of Valdracko, in Planetomackia, is full of Italian 
motifs. That of the old woman go-between who transmits to the lover 
what is ostensibly his own love letter disdainfully returned, but what is 
really an encouraging reply, may well have come from Boccaccio’s story 
of the confessor as go-between — Decam. III., 3 (not noticed by Koep- 
pel). There is, too, a typical Italian poisoning, and a general family 
slaughter — father killing son-in-law, daughter killing father and her¬ 
self — which recalls Cinthio’s tragedy of Orbecche, or his narrative 
version of the same story in Hecatomm. II., 2.” (Wolff, Eng. Stud., 
Vol. 37, p. 346, note 1.) 


32 


ROBERT GREENE 


cable in his hatred. There is no sacrifice too great, be it his 
own daughter. There is no treachery too violent. Greene 
has presented us with a unified conception. Valdracko is 
consistently portrayed — with one exception. We cannot 
understand the depth of his motive as co-ordinate with the 
terribleness of his actions. We cannot feel that Valdracko 
moves wholly from within. To the extent that he is moved 
by his creator he falls short of real personality. 

We are here making one of our most serious criticisms 
upon Greene's art in fiction. Greene gets hold, to a remark¬ 
able degree, of the nature of narrative so far as the choice 
and arrangement of events is concerned. His sense for action 
is strong. His ability in characterization, on the other hand, 
is not so well developed. He seldom presents more than 
types. Although his presentation is often a refinement upon 
that of his predecessors, and although he succeeds in idealiz¬ 
ing certain kinds of personality, his characterization is always, 
in his novels, inadequate. Greene has not enough insight 
into the depths of human nature to gain a full conception 
of the sources of action. He does not relate sufficiently a 
motive for conduct, and the conduct itself. 

This is a serious criticism. But to say so, is not also to 
say that it is a severe one. We must remember that in 1585 
Shakespeare had not begun to write, that Marlowe had pro¬ 
duced nothing, that Kyd had not even written the Spanish 
Tragedy. Greene had few models in English Literature, 29 
for no one had yet opened the eyes of English men of 
letters to a realization of what it was possible to do in the 
creation of character when creative power was at its highest. 
Greene's supreme achievement is Valdracko, which, we have 
said, falls short. Greene had not intensity enough of imagi- 

29 Sidney’s Arcadia with its minute and keen analysis of character 
was written before 1585, but there is no way of knowing whether Greene 
had read it. 


OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM 


33 


nation to raise him above the sphere of type into the sphere 
of personality; so the story of Valdracko remains a tale, — 
not a tragedy. But the wonder is not that Greene failed. 

In conclusion, my discussion of the frame-work tales may 
require a word of explanation. Greene’s career in fiction, 
chronologically, was from the treatise to the romance, — 
from the utile to the duld, through the frame-work tales, 
which were both. In view of that general development I 
have taken up the frame-work tale as a progression from the 
one extreme to the other. It must be remembered that I 
have done so only for the sake of classification and clearness. 
The order here is not at all that in which they were written. 

We can easily be led astray by the evolutionary idea in the 
case of a man like Greene whose work in fiction as a whole 
does, at first sight, seem to have been the result of a con¬ 
scious development. For we have first Mamillia , the didac¬ 
tic treatise; then about 1586 and ’87 a series of frame-work 
tales; and finally in 1588 and ’89 a group of romances, narra¬ 
tives pure and simple. The division, however, is by no means 
exact. Greene’s second work, for instance, was a romance. 
And so was his third, and his fourth — this last in a prodigal- 
son frame-work. Moreover, after he had left romances, and 
had turned to another form of writing, Greene appeared with 
one of the most didactic of his frame-work tales. Such con¬ 
siderations prevent any belief that Green’s novels represent 
a real progression in his mind. 

The development, if there had been one, would have been 
in accordance with Greene’s natural ability. His real power, 
if he had only known it, was in narrative. But as I shall 
have occasion to state later, Greene did not fully realize 
wherein his talent lay. He developed technique, methods 
of meeting definite problems of literary presentation and ex¬ 
pression. In this sense there is distinct progress in his work. 
Of the difference, however, between the two elements of the 


34 


ROBERT GREENE 


frame-work tale he seems to have been unaware. The cul¬ 
tural element of the frame-work was quite as significant as 
the included tale. He felt no need — there isn't much, for 
that matter, — for drawing a distinction between didacti¬ 
cism, which was his crude but only criticism of life, and the 
capability of giving pleasure which a work of art must have. 
We cannot, therefore, regard this division of Greene's work 
as more than a miscellaneous collection of pamphlets, most 
of them fortuitously centered around the year 1587. To him 
they were not in any way a link between the treatise and the 
artistic narrative. 

(C) The Romances 

From these frame-work tales, we pass to the next group of 
Greene’s novels. This is the group which belongs to the ro¬ 
mantic fiction that was prominent for several years during 
Greene's career. It is true that we most often associate the 
idea of this romantic fiction with that of Sidney's Arcadia. 
But the Arcadia is only one of the class of Elizabethan ro¬ 
mances, which, influenced by various models, such as Italian 
and Spanish pastorals, were inspired chiefly by the translation 
of the Greek Romances. 30 

The nature of the Greek Romances we need not take up at 
length, with their emphasis upon the picturesque, the rhe¬ 
torical, the fanciful, the diversified, rather than the unified, 
expression of life. For the Greek Romancer we know that 
life moves not as a whole, governed by physical and moral 
law, and that, for him, events follow events not in relation 
of causation but of chance. The activities of life are unmoti¬ 
vated. There is no interaction between environment and 

30 In the discussion of Greene’s relation to Greek Romance, I am 
much indebted to Dr. S. L. Wolff who has treated this subject with 
thoroughness in his The Greek Romances in Elizabethan Fiction. Colum¬ 
bia University Press, 1912. 


OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM 


35 


human destiny, nor indeed between human character and 
human conduct. Sentiment is mere sentimentality; nature 
is mere spectacle. The dissociation of the ideas of cause 
and result leaves to Fortune the direction of human activity. 
To their incalculableness, the interest in events is due; and 
so the “paradoxical, the bizarre, the inconsistent, the self¬ 
contradictory— these were the stock in trade with the writers 
of Greek Romance.” Such interests manifest themselves 
in style — antithesis, alliteration, parallelism, tendency to 
psychologize, elaborate pictures, trial-scenes, and debates; 
and they lead at once to a superabundance of episodic ma¬ 
terial. The subordination of plot and character, both often 
lost in digressions, elevates the significance of Fortune and of 
sentiment, against the first of which many a tirade is directed, 
and upon the second of which much energy of analysis is 
expanded. 

Concerning the accessibility, too, of these romances to 
Greene, only a word is needed. The AEthiopian History of 
Heliodorus was current in Underdowne’s translation even be¬ 
fore Lyly wrote his Euphues. Angel Day published a ver¬ 
sion of the Daphnis and Chloe of Longus in 1587 which at once 
had its effect upon Greene. The first translation in English 
of Achilles Tatius’ Clitophon and Leucippe was not made until 
1597. That translation was too late to have any effect upon 
Elizabethan fiction, but there were versions of the romance 
in Latin, Italian, 31 and French, which were well known in 
England before the time of Greene. 

In speaking of the influence of the Greek Romances upon 
any one man in the Elizabethan period, however, it does not 

31 Joseph de Perott (Mod. Lang. Notes, Vol. XXIX., No. 2, p. 63, 
Feb. 1914) believes that Greene used an Italian version of Achilles 
Tatius, as follows: Di Achilli Tatic Allessandrino dell’amor di Leucippe 
et di Clitophonte libri otto Tradotti in volgare da Francesco Angelo Coccio. 
In Venetia, Appresso da Domenico, & Gio Battista Guerra, fratelli, 1563. 


36 


ROBERT GREENE 


seem to me that we must necessarily assume that all 
this influence came directly from the original romances. 
A particular author, Greene for instance, may not have 
taken, and probably did not take, every incident which 
is common to his works and to the Greek Romances 
straight from the Romances themselves. This influence 
was widespread throughout the literature of the continent; 
and by the time that Greene began to write, many of 
the most typical of the structural elements of Greek 
Romance had become a part of the flesh and bone of 
Elizabethan fiction. In many instances, moreover, the in¬ 
fluence of mediaeval romance must be taken into account in 
discussing the directness with which any particular element 
came into Elizabethan fiction. 

These novels of Greene which show predominantly the 
influence of the Greek Romances have in them nothing which 
savors of the treatise. They may, as does Pandosto , “dis¬ 
cour the triumph of time;” or, as Menaphon, “decipher the 
variable effects of Fortune, the wonders of Loue, the triumphs 
of inconstant time.” But, although they were, according to 
their title-pages, printed for purposes of morality, they are 
fiction pure and simple, fiction of love, adventure, jealousy, 
separation, reunion of kindred, motivated largely by the 
caprice of Fortune and the wilfulness of man. 

The tendency of Greek Romance to minimize character and 
motive, and to make Fortune become the basis of plot, was 
one which fitted in well with Greene’s nature, for Greene had 
an eye to the narrative effect. In following out their influ¬ 
ence he was free to give sway to his native interest in 
events, and he was at the same time relieved from any 
considerable problems of characterization. Fortune took all 
the responsibility to keep the story moving; she became the 
center around which were grouped various people and actions. 

In this class of romantic fiction, we should include first of 


OMNE TULIT PTJNCTUM 


37 


all the Second Part of Mamillia. The First Part, as we 
have seen, belongs to the didactic type of Euphues. The 
Second Part is essentially romantic. After Pharicles has left 
Padua, the two faithful women constant still, he goes to 
Sicily. He grows into favor at the court, has various experi¬ 
ences, is denounced as a traitor by a courtezan of the place 
whom he has spurned, is cast into prison, condemned to die, 
and finally is rescued by Mamillia, the only character of the 
action of the First Part, besides Pharicles, who has any defi¬ 
nite place in the action of the Second Part. Throughout the 
Second Part, there are many elements, to be sure, which 
come from Euphues, but the principal narrative is that of 
the romantic kind. 

The Second Part of Mamillia was published in 1583. The 
following year Greene published two novels which are of this 
same type. One of them is Arhasto, the story which an old 
man living alone in a cell tells to a stranger. He had been 
a prince, he said. When he was on an expedition of war, he 
had fallen in love with his enemy’s daughter. The princess 
did not return his affection; but her sister, whom the prince 
disregarded, fell in love with him. Because this sister re¬ 
leased him from her father’s prison, he dissembled love and 
took her with him to his own country. Later discovering 
that his love was only dissimulation, she died of grief. The 
haughty princess then took it into her head to love, but the 
prince spurned her as violently as he had formerly loved her. 
The nobles revolted to avenge his wife’s death, and drove 
him from his throne. So he lives in his cell, throwing the 
blame for the whole affair upon Fortune, whom he spites by 
his contentment with a lowly lot. The Carde of Fancie be¬ 
longs with this romantic group, but it is discussed elsewhere 
on account of its relation to the prodigal-son stories. 32 

We come then to Pandosto, 1588. The germ of this ro- 
32 Chap. III., p. 66. 


38 


ROBERT GREENE 


mance probably goes back to an incident in the history of 
Poland and Bohemia. 33 A fourteenth century king, Siemo- 
witsch, or Ziemowit, becoming suspicious of his Bohemian 
wife, put her into prison, where she bore a son. The queen 
was then strangled, and the son was sent away. The child 
was brought up by a peasant woman, and was finally restored 
to his father, who died deeply repentant in 1381. The story, 
it is thought, was carried to England at the time when Ann 
of Bohemia was married to Richard II. 

Pandosto, in the general outline, follows the historical inci¬ 
dent, except that it is a daughter, not a son, who is born in 
the prison. We do not know in what form the story came 
to Greene. It may have been in something of the shape 
that we have it from his pen, in which case the work 
may be only a retelling. Greene’s romance, however, is 
distinctly of the Greek type. The historical elements easily 
fitted in with such a method of treatment. The nucleus 
was there. All that was needed was to gather about it an 
abundance of Greek structural elements. 

That is what Greene did. He worked out, for example, 
quite in the method of Heliodorus, an elaborate trial-scene 
and the use of the oracle for the vindication of chastity. He 
borrowed from Longus the description of Fawnia’s life among 
the shepherds after she was committed to the destiny of the 
sea, — the details of the Shepherd’s finding her, her rural life, 
and her later disclosure to her father. There was added, too, 
the romantic story of the love of Fawnia and Dorastus, 34 son 

33 See Eng. Stud, for 1878, 1888, where the source of Pandosto is 
discussed by Caro. Also Herford, Eversley Shakespeare, Vol. IV., p. 265. 

34 De Perott (Englische Studien, 1908, p. 308) in an article, Robert 
Greenes Entlehnung aus dem Ritterspiegel, directs attention to what he 
calls a borrowing ( Pandosto — Shak. Library. Vol. IV., p. 45, line 13 — 
p. 49, line 14) from Le Chevalier du Soliel, Vol. III., ff. 308-9). I fail 
to see any resemblance worthy to be called a “borrowing.” The situa¬ 
tion is one which might be found in any pastoral romance. 


OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM 


39 


to the Egistus who had been the object of Pandosto’s sus¬ 
picions, and to the shores of whose kingdom Fortune brought 
the little outcast and her boat. He made this love the means 
of Fawnia’s return, for he employed the structural device 
whereby the shipwreck of the eloping lovers brought Fawnia 
again home. 35 

It is highly characteristic of Greene that Pandosto is his 
first pastoral. While pastoralism had already made, and was 
making, itself felt in England, Greene had not introduced it 
into his works. There was no particular, no immediate, de¬ 
mand for it. Arbasto and the Garde of Fancie, written earlier, 
are both free from the elements of shepherd’s life. But in 
1587 Angel Day’s version of Daphnis and Chloe appeared, a 
work so distinctly pastoral as to direct Greene’s energies to 
an attempt at something of the same kind. There is no 
doubt, therefore, that Angel Day is responsible for Pandosto 
and Menaphon, its successor of the following year. 36 

In Menaphon , pastoralism is of much more importance 
than in Pandosto. The romance does not open with pastoral 
elements, to be sure, for the first part of it is devoted to telling 
of the pestilence in Arcadia, and of the ambiguous oracle. 
The purpose is of course to hurl us in medias res, but it is not 
realized. Without making his plan entirely clear, Greene 
leaves the opening situation and goes to another, the situation 
with which the line of action he is to develop really begins. 

Menaphon, a shepherd, walking by the sea-shore, saw 
pieces of a wreck floating near, and on the shore an old man, 
and a woman with a child. He asked them who they were, 

36 For a more complete account of Greene’s borrowings from Greek 
Romance see Wolff, p. 446 seq. In the same work see also a comparison 
of Pandosto and the Winter’s Tale, pp. 451-2. 

36 “Greene’s borrowings indicate clearly that he used a translation 
by Angel Day, for he takes from it several details not to be found in 
either the Greek or French version.” Wolff, Greek Romances , p. 447. 


40 


ROBERT GREENE 


and offered to help them. Sephestia called herself Samela of 
Cyprus, wife of a poor gentleman now dead; the old man was 
her servant. Menaphon took them home, and immediately 
fell in love with the beautiful stranger. Then the story goes 
on with Sephestia’s life among the shepherds and shepherd¬ 
esses, their courtships and petty fallings out, their songs 
and jigs. 

One Melicertus hears of Samela and confesses his love. 
Both are troubled; for to each the other resembles the sup¬ 
posedly dead husband or wife. Meantime the child Pleusi- 
dippus is carried away by pirates to Thessaly, where he grows 
up as heir to the throne. Hearing of the Arcadian Samela, 
he comes to present himself as a suitor. Democles, the king, 
also comes to woo. Now, Democles is Samela’s (Sephestia’s) 
father. And Melicertus is Maximus, her husband, with 
whom she was forced to flee from the court to escape her 
father’s wrath, but from whom she was separated by ship¬ 
wreck. The plot is, then, that of a husband wooing his wife, 
a son wooing his mother, a father wooing his daughter, all of 
them royalty in disguise. Complications arise; blood is 
about to be shed. Then an old woman steps forth and ex¬ 
plains the fulfilment of the ambiguous prophecy. 

The story as it stands is considerable of a mixture from 
several sources. The central idea, we may suppose, Greene 
got from Warner’s tale of Argentile and Curan in Albion’s 
England . 37 At least he probably got from that tale the idea 
of royal persons meeting in the disguise of the shepherd life, 
and failing to recognize each other. Even in this point the 
similarity is not particularly close, except that in Warner’s 
tale and in Menaphon, the lover (Curan in Warner; Melicer- 

37 1586, Bk. IV., ch. 20. In Chalmer’s English Poets, 1810, Vol. IV., 
pp. 498-658. See J. Q. Adams, Greene’s “Menaphon” and “ The Thra¬ 
cian Wonder,” Mod. Phil. III., pp. 317-8; also Wolff’s Greek Romances, 
p. 442. 


OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM 


41 


tus in Greene) confesses to a former love affair and describes 
his former mistress (who is of course identical with the new). 
From Sidney’s Arcadia Greene imitated various elements, 
particularly the wooing of Sephestia by both father and son. 
From the Greek Romances he incorporated certain structural 
and verbal parallels. 38 

With all these borrowings, and with all the inconsistencies 
of plot and character, the story of Menaphon is still Greene’s. 
For there is something more to it than plot and character 
and borrowings. In structure it is far from being the best 
of Greene’s works. Its companion-piece, Pandosto, surpasses 
it in this regard. But I believe that when most of the few 
present-day readers of Greene’s romances agree in pro¬ 
nouncing it his most charming novel they are right in their 
judgment. It is as near the essence of the dulci as Greene 
ever got. 

Menaphon is not equal to Lodge’s Rosalynde; and it had 
not, moreover, the good fortune to be turned into a Shake¬ 
spearian play. But it is, nevertheless, a sweet story. There 
is about it an atmosphere quite its own, — the idyllic pastoral 
setting, and the songs, the country loves, the dances, the 
tending of flocks, the piping in the shade of the hawthorn. 
There is the sunshine of the anywhere-nowhere Arcadia, 
the idealization of existence, the freedom of movement that 
comes from life not lived within the bounds of the troubled 
world. 

“Whiles thus Arcadia rested in a silent quiet, Menaphon 
the Kings Shepheard, a man of high account among the 
swaines of Arcadia , loued of the Nymphes, as the paragon of 
all their countrey youngsters, walking solitarie downe to the 
shore, to see if anie of his ewes and lambes were straggled 
downe to the strond to brouse on sea iuie, wherfore they take 

38 See Wolff, Greek Romances, for a discussion of these parallels of 
structure and phrase. 


42 


ROBERT GREENE 


speciall delight to feede; he found his flockes grazing upon 
the Promontorie Mountaines hardlie: wheron resting him¬ 
self e on a hill that ouer-peered the great Mediterraneum, 
noting how Phoebus fetched his Laualtos on the purple Plaines 
of Neptunus, as if he had meant to haue courted Thetis in 
the royal tie of his roabes. . . . Menaphon looking ouer the 
champion of Arcadie to see if the Continent were as full of 
smiles, as the seas were of fauours, sawe the shrubbes as in 
a dreame with delightfull harmonie, and the birdes that 
chaunted on their braunches not disturbed with the least 
breath of a fauourable Zephirus. Seeing thus the accord of 
the Land and Sea, casting a fresh gaze on the water Nimphs, 
he began to consider how Venus was feigned by the poets to 
spring of the froathe of the Seas; which draue him straight 
into a deepe coniecture of the inconstancie of Loue: 

Some say Loue 
Foolish Loue 

Doth rule and gouerne all the Gods, 

I say Loue, 

Inconstant Loue, 

Sets mens senses farre at ods.” 

There are cares in this land of Arcadia, hearts sore with 
unrequited love. And there are wars and rumors of wars, 
languishing in prisons, shipwreck, separation of kindred. 
But all these will pass away, we know; the lost will be found, 
hard hearts will melt, and happiness will come to her own. 
The story is romantic and unreal; it could never have hap¬ 
pened. But that doesn't make any difference. There is a 
charm to it for one who can disentangle himself for a moment 
from the crowding business of the day to go back to the golden 
times, — even don a Watteau coat and hat to sport with jolly 
shepherds, make love to the beautiful shepherdesses, and, 
more than all, enjoy 

“The sweet content that country life affords.” 


OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM 


43 


Philomela need not be summarized in full. The romance 
is the story of a jealous husband who falsely accuses his wife 
of inconstancy, and has her banished. She goes to a distant 
land and lives humbly. Then the slaves who have borne 
false witness confess their wrong-doing. The jealous hus¬ 
band is himself banished. He sets out to find his wife, and 
comes at length to the place in which she lives. Tired of 
his vain search, he assumes the responsibility for the murder 
of the Duke’s son, who is thought to have been killed. The 
wife hears of the self-accusation, and to save her husband 
declares herself to be the murderer. Then the Duke’s son 
appears and the man and his wife are happy in their reunion 
— so happy that the man dies of joy. 39 

There is one romance left, Ciceronis Amor, or Tullies Love. 
Next to Pandosto, this was Greene’s most popular novel. 
It is a story of love, with pastoral elements intermingled 
(rather, we should say, dragged in). Greene speaks of it 
as his attempt “to counterfeit Tullies phrase,” and as his 
“indeauor to pen doune the loves of Cicero, which Plutarch, 
and Cornelius Nepos, forgot in their writings.” 

In all these romances, it is ever necessary to bear in 
mind Greene’s attitude toward Fortune. His inability to 
ground a plot in motives which have their sources within 
the springs of personality made him perceive the value, 
and the necessity, of Fortune as a narrative element. 
Greene’s attitude never developed into a cult. Fortune, 
mysterious and incalculable, was to some people rather more 
real then than now. She was a personality whose whims 
determined much of the lot of man. She was one of the forces 
of the universe, sharing with man himself the responsibility 
for the management of the world. Such a view, I say, Greene 
did not acquire. He had not enough imagination to acquire 

39 Greene’s novel furnished one of the plots in Davenport’s City 
Nightcap. 1624. 


44 


ROBERT GREENE 


it. A conception like that would have necessitated the ability 
to grasp character which was the very thing that Greene 
lacked. But although he did not rise high in his conception 
of Fortune, he was able to get from her that which he needed 
for the success of his narrative. What he wanted was some¬ 
thing which would help him get his characters about, move 
them from one situation into another, without having to 
justify those activities. Fortune could do that. One turn 
of her wdieel would be enough to change the face of things 
completely. We should have a new and interesting com¬ 
plication, and no explanation would be necessary as to how 
it came about. Fortune became, therefore, a word ever on 
Greene’s lips. It represented an idea to be played with, 
talked about, bandied here and there, given all manner of 
attributes; most important of all, Fortune became an 
actual motive power in a line of action. 40 But wherever 
used, she was primarily a narrative element, a servant to 
Greene’s story-telling instinct. 

In this capacity Fortune is the source at once of Greene’s 
strength and of his weakness: of strength, in that his use of 
Fortune enables him to present interesting and (forgetting 
for the moment the long speeches — which are for the most 
part the fault of the age, not of Greene) rapid narrative; 
of weakness, in that Fortune relieved him of what would by 
nature have been to him a difficult task, the creation of 
genuine characters. 

Recognizing the place which Fortune holds, we can under¬ 
stand the work that Greene has constructed on that basis. 
His incompetence to seize hold upon the fundamental 
nature of a character and to define the principles upon which 

40 Dr. Wolff (Greek Romances, p. 392) summarizes Greene’s concep¬ 
tion of Fortune as having three phases: that in which she is purely 
an abstraction, that in which she is a quasi-personality, that in which she 
is a mistress of plot. 


OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM 


45 


that character acts, his leaving the conduct of affairs pretty 
much in Fortune’s hands results, as we should well expect, 
in many inconsistencies of plot and character. Consistency 
is no virtue if there is no relation between what a man is 
and what a man does. We are not aware of defects unless 
we have an ideal of perfection. So far as consistency was 
concerned, Greene had no such ideal. 

The result of this disregard for making a story plausible 
is easily made apparent. The situation in Menaphon , for 
example, of father, husband, and son, all in love with Samela 
is in itself ridiculous. The total ignoring of the elapsed 
twenty years is unpardonable if we stop to think of it. 
When we stop to think of it, too, Arbasto is nothing but the 
tale of a whining old man. And we become almost impatient 
with Greene that he should permit the quondam king the 
outrageous privilege of heaping the blame for his misfortune 
anywhere but on his own wilful head. The point about the 
whole matter, however, is that we do not stop to think. 
Realizing that Pandosto or Menaphon or whatever romance 
it is we take up, is so largely the result merely of what 
“ happened,” we move along with the action, never pausing 
to analyze or to question. Inconsistencies do not seem to 
have bothered Greene; and so long as he makes no attempt 
to smooth them over we are hardly aware that they exist. 

Now that the account of the various kinds of Greene’s 
fiction is completed, it remains to speak of some general topics 
which pertain to his fiction as a whole. In this connection 
there are qualities of style which we may take up first. 

When we speak of Greene’s style, both as to its own 
characteristics and as to the influences which produced it, 
we naturally think first of John Lyly and his Euphues. 
Rightly so, for Lyly’s novel was predominant when Greene’s 
first one was published, and continued to be so for a number 
of years. As a matter of fact, however, Lyly’s manner of 


46 


ROBERT GREENE 


writing was not originated by him, nor was it peculiar to 
him. Various scholars, notably Mr. Bond, have set forth 
Lyly’s relations with his predecessors, and have shown that 
there were at hand practically all the elements which Lyly 
employed. Greene, therefore, in following Lyly was in 
reality carrying on the tradition of the English novel as 
established by Gascoigne and as used by Pettie, Whetstone, 
Riche, and the rest of the earlier writers of fiction. 

Greene was not far from the beginning of this line of 
development. But even by this time, although fiction was 
still tentative in its forms (it is always tentative, so far as 
that is concerned), it had taken on certain fixed modes of 
expression. The conventionality of Elizabethan poetry 
both in form and in content has long been recognized. 
Elizabethan fiction underwent the same sort of process, so 
that not only form, but thought as well, and the manner of 
expressing it, became to a large degree stereotyped and 
impersonal. So advanced a state of conventionality was 
fortunate from Greene's point of view. It made unnecessary 
any large amount of originality with regard to the treatment 
of any particular situation. The method of handling a 
courtship, for example, was to be found ready at hand. 
But the result of the taking over by Greene of these 
elements of novel construction was, from the manner 
in which he used these elements, that of carrying the 
process still further. That is, Greene seldom rises above 
the convention itself to make of it a genuine means of 
character protrayal or an integral part in the motivation of 
a plot. We have, therefore, in his novels an almost endless 
succession of similar situations treated in a similar fashion, 
a great many of which might be transferred from one novel 
to another, with no harm done, — or benefit either. 

It was to Greene’s detriment that he did to so great an 
extent become a follower of convention. He was impeded 


OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM 


47 


rather than helped by his conformity to fashion. The quality 
of his work, which, we have before had occasion to state, is 
his characteristic and most complete attainment, is the 
straightforwardness and swiftness of his narrative. If he 
had left himself free to the guidance of his own natural 
talent, his results would have in them more of permanent 
value. Had he broken away from tradition more fully and 
worked in the vein represented by the tale of Tompkins the 
Wheelwright or by some of his short stories in the conny- 
catching pamphlets, 41 he would, however much he was 
catering to the taste of his time in conforming to fashion, 
have done a more effectual service in the development of a 
simple narrative style. 

It is apparent that Greene did not himself understand 
wherein his ability lay. He has cluttered his stories up with 
all sorts of decorative tinsel: letters, “passions,” speeches 
for every kind of situation, formal discourses, misogynist 
tirades, declarations of love and their answers, digressions 
and asides to the reader, proverbial philosophy, quotations 
from all the tongues, stock illustrations, classical and natural 
history allusions, — commonplaces in Elizabethan fiction too 
familiar to need illustration. Indeed it requires on the part 
of the modern reader as full a recognition as he is able to 
give of the fact that after all Greene is not wholly responsible 
for the presence of these features in his work to prevent a 
failure to perceive its real merit, and a condemnation of it 
wholesale to the literary bone-yard. But the worst is, 
granting that such things were fashionable and so to be 
indulged in, that Greene seems to have delighted in this 
elegance of phrase and encumbering ornament. 

Greene seems not to have understood that he was thus 
ever striving, as it were, to get away from what his nature 
would have him do. At the same time he did make progress 
41 See Chapter IV. 


48 


ROBERT GREENE 


in his style. Pandosto is more direct than the Carde of Fancie. 
Throughout Greene’s career there is perceptible a slow but 
steady turning away from the ornate and artificial to the 
more natural kind of fiction. This turning is due partly, 
of course, to the turning of the age in that direction. But 
it is also due to Greene’s own development, a development 
of which he was to some extent conscious. In Menaphon 
there is a passage 42 which shows that ‘Titerary style” was 
to Greene something which could be put on and taken off 
at will. This consciousness is further evidenced by the 
admirable simplicity of the social pamphlets, and by 
the abrupt change in the tone of the last few pages of 
the Groatsworth of Wit. 

Greene possessed, when he forgot himself and was really 
concerned with what he said rather than with how he said 
it, a straightforwardness wholly unexpected in a writer 
living before Bacon. This directness is especially notice¬ 
able, as I said, in the social pamphlets. But it is discernible 
in the fiction, too. Illustrations can be found near the end 
of many of the novels. Like most of his predecessors, Greene 
was more interested in getting a story under way than he 
was in its conclusion. Perhaps it would be more nearly 
correct to say that he expended more energy of elaboration 
upon the first half than upon the latter. The result of such 
a process is that the opening of a story is often stilted in 
its method. Too much emphasis is placed upon speech, 
talking back and forth and writing letters; the movement 

42 “Samela made this replie, because she heard him so superfine 
as if Ephoebus had learned him to refine his mother tongue, wherefore 
thought he had done it of an inkhorne desire to be eloquent; and 
Melicertus thinking that Samela had learned with Lucilla in Athens 
to anatomize wit, and speake none but Similes, imagined she smoothed 
her talke to be thought like Sapho, Phaos Paramour. 

Thus deceived either in others suppositions, Samela followed her 
sute thus.” Vol. IV., p. 82. 


OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM 


49 


is slow and tedious, exasperating at times. Then suddenly, 
as if all at once realizing that he has enough written to make 
a salable pamphlet, Greene takes himself in hand, dis¬ 
penses with his artificiality, winds up his action, dismisses 
his characters and lo! the story is done. There is a certain 
precipitousness about such a performance, one must admit. 
You don’t always keep up with it, and you don’t always 
understand just what has happened. Perhaps the haste is 
just as bad technique as the slowness. My point here is 
that Greene can be direct; that he has, underneath the as¬ 
sumed literary form of expression, another more simple form. 

Throughout the whole of my discussion of Greene’s novels 
I have repeatedly dwelt upon what seems to me to be Greene’s 
real ability, that of narration with an aim at artistic narrative 
effect. I have, too, told what seems to me to be his defects 
in characterization, his inability to infuse life into his men 
and women. In view of what has been observed above in 
regard to Greene’s over-emphasis upon the first half of a 
story, this element of characterization deserves just a word 
more. 

Greene constantly threw stones in the way of his own 
narrations. There is no doubt that he did so deliberately, — 
subservient to custom, and pleased with his results. I 
think there is another reason, though, which helps to 
account for these obstructions. Inheritances they were, — 
“passions,” speeches, letters, and so on, — coming from 
various literary sources. There was no other phase of 
Elizabethan fiction which became more stereotyped in its 
form of expression. But these elements, found most excess¬ 
ively in the first part of the story, are indicative of some¬ 
thing else than just convention. They manifest an interest 
in characterization. 

The “passions,” for example, which are scattered broad¬ 
cast throughout Elizabethan novels are attempts at char- 


50 


ROBERT GREENE 


acter analysis. They aim to set forth the mental states 
in which people find themselves under definite conditions. 
The psychology upon which they are based is generally 
unsound and artificial. The emotions that these people 
undergo, the thoughts that they utter, are not true to life. 
But the faults do not alter the necessity of our under¬ 
standing the aim of this psychologizing. With all its 
imperfection it shows an inclination toward character 
study. There was, clearly, on the part of the Elizabethan 
novelists a growing interest not only in the art of telling a 
story effective for the events in it, but also in making the 
people whom those events concern appear as genuinely 
human as possible. Greene was a participant in this move¬ 
ment toward fuller characterization. The fact that he 
did not succeed must not lessen our recognition of the fact 
that he tried. 

Looked at from this point of view, there is perhaps a little 
more sympathy to be felt with the feeble efforts which 
Greene and the rest of them made. These men were con¬ 
forming to fashion, they were over-elaborate and affected; 
but they were at the same time using the only methods 
they knew of presenting character. They had not yet 
learned the art of letting characters reveal their own person¬ 
alities in natural conversation, nor had they learned that 
we may come to know people not only by what they do 
and say but also by their reactions toward other people, and 
by the reactions of other people toward them. 

With the various people whom Greene endeavored to 
present we need not deal at length. It may be well to take 
up two of them in order to bring out the two prominent 
facts about Greene’s characterization. 

Of all of Greene’s characters Sephestia is probably the 
best known. She is the victim of distressing and cruel 
circumstances, but she embodies all the qualities of an 


OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM 


51 


ideal heroine. She is beautiful, kind, faithful, resourceful, 
patient, charming. When she sings her lullaby to her 
sleeping babe, when she mourns her fate, when she moves 
among the scenes of pastoral life, or when in prison she 
spurns the love of a king, — always she has our interest 
and our sympathy. Our feeling for her is not, however, 
that which comes from depth or clearness in her por¬ 
trayal. It is derived rather from a certain refinement of 
atmosphere which surrounds her, from the delicacy of the 
lines with which she is depicted. I introduce Sephestia 
here because this refinement and delicacy which I mention 
in connection with her compose one of Greene’s salient 
characteristics, one of the things we often think of in 
relation to him. Indeed, the significant fact about Greene’s 
women lies not so much in an added depth of portraiture 
over what his predecessors had accomplished, as in giving 
to them a new interest by a process of idealization. Greene’s 
women are not, that is, so much more genuinely human, 
nor do they necessarily act from so much more definitely 
conceived motives than those of his predecessors. But 
they do possess the charm which arises from a delicacy of 
presentation and from a refinement of attitude toward 
them as heroines. 

The other character I wish to speak of is Arbasto, who 
illustrates in an extraordinary degree another phase of 
Greene’s characters. Arbasto is an old man who lives in 
a cell and mourns. The experience of life has been un¬ 
happy for him, for he has been banished from his kingdom. 
Fortune is to blame. The association of Fortune with the 
affairs of men which Arbasto makes, and which Greene lets 
pass unchallenged, leads to an understanding of what the 
trouble is. Greene got many ideas from the Italian Renais¬ 
sance, plots and motives, and types of characters. But 
there was one conception which he did not get hold of 


52 


ROBERT GREENE 


in a way to make it effective. That was the conception 
of the force of personality. I spoke of this failure in 
connection with the discussion of Valdracko, but it is 
apparent in all of Greene’s works. Greene’s interest in 
characterization was not enough to counterbalance the 
lack of a sweeping imagination such as Marlowe had, 
and such as is necessary to transform puppets into living 
heroes. And so, whether the ruling passion be revenge, 
jealousy, ambition, what not, there is always a littleness 
about Greene’s portrayal, a dissatisfaction with the result 
obtained. No one of these characters has strength to 
dominate the situation in which he is placed. Fortune, 
not personality, is the moving power. 

One is inclined to come away from a close study of 
Greene’s novels with too grave an impression of him. We 
may inquire what he was like as an author, what his methods 
were, what influences affected him. But we must remember 
that Greene wrote rapidly, that he was primarily a jour¬ 
nalist. He copied, adapted, created. He may have been 
conscious in his art. There is no way of knowing, for 
consciousness of effort and utilitarianism of purpose are 
not mutually exclusive ideals. We must be careful, 
however, not to regard as necessarily deliberate art what 
may be only shrewdness. I am convinced that there is 
no more fundamental element in a true conception of 
Greene than a realization of the fact that he is best appre¬ 
ciated when studied with an attitude that does not take 
him too seriously. We must not, in other words, over¬ 
look the journalist in our study of the artist. 


CHAPTER III 
SERO SED SERIO 

For Greene, the useful continued to mingle with the 
sweet up until 1590. England’s conflict with “Anti-Christ” 
and her triumph over the Spanish Armada had, to be sure, 
swerved him aside to discover his conscience in religion, as 
he put it, in the Spanish Masquerado (lie. Feb. 1, 1589), a 
thoroughly dull “devise” wherein “is discovered effectuallie, 
in certaine breefe Sentences and Mottos, the pride and 
insolencie of the Spanish estate . . . whereunto by the 
Author, for the better understanding of his device, is 
added a breefe glosse,” the which written, we are informed, 
“least I might be thought to tie myselfe wholly to amorous 
conceites.” 1 The work is as uninspired as can be,— 
Greene had probably picked up an anti-Catholic tract 
somewhere and had translated it (as he did the Royal 
Exchange the next year) when the occasion was so ripe that 
any pamphlet with “Spanish” on its title-page would find 
a ready market. There is nothing of real religion about it. 
The work had not been prompted by any such motive as 
repentance for the triviality of earlier writings; so Greene 
went on with Menaphon and Ciceronis Amor in the way he 
had been going. But Orpharion, licensed January 9, 1590, 
marks the end of this division of Greene’s work. 2 Hence¬ 
forth — for a year — his attitude is represented by the 
Sero sed serio of this chapter. 

1 Vol. V., p. 242. 

2 Philomela and Farewell to Follie were published after this date; 
but see Chap. VI. 


53 


54 


ROBERT GREENE 


Greene has told us how the new motto came to be 
adopted. 3 “After I was burdened with the penning of the 
Cobler of Canterbury , I waxed passing melancholy, as grieving 
that either I should be wrong with envy, or wronged with 
suspition ... so in a discontented humour I sat me 
down upon my bed-side, and began to cal to remembrance 
what fond and wanton lines had past my pen, and how I had 
bent my course to a wrong shore.” These thoughts troubled 
him greatly and he prayed to God to be shadowed with the 
wings of His grace, to be kept an undefiled member of His 
church, and to show himself regenerate and a reformed man 
from all his former follies. Being in this meditation, he 
fell asleep. 

Then a vision came to him which he describes. Chaucer 
and Gower held conversation with each other and with him, 
the former encouraging him in his literary art and the 
latter condemning him. He inclined to Gower’s ideas and 
promised to write no more wanton pamphlets. Then 
Solomon appeared and discoursed of Wisdom and Religion. 
“Be a Devine, my Sonne,” he said. Greene awoke and “ a 
sodaine feare tainted every limme and I felt a horror in 
my conscience, for the follyes of my Penne: whereupon, 
... I resolved peremptorilie to leave all thoughts of 
love, . . . howsoever the direction of my studies shall 
be limited me, as you had the blossomes of my wanton 
fancies, so shall you have the fruits of my better labours.” 

Thus did Greene set the machinery going which was to 
carry out his next venture, the series of novels on the story 
of the prodigal son. 

That which was destined to become the most influential 
factor in spreading the theme and form of the prodigal story 
was the Acolastus of Gnaepheus, a Latin play which was 
published at Antwerp in 1529. The reason for the popu- 
3 Vol. XII. 


SERO SED SERIO 


55 


larity of this work was that of its double appeal. In the 
first place, it suited the reaction of the Reformation period 
against the non-Christian literature of the classical writers; 
and in the second place, it took easily the form of the 
Terentian Comedy. This double capacity for supplying the 
need for Christian teaching and for being substituted as a 
textbook in the schools was the source of its power. The 
Acolastus was widely read and widely translated. 4 It sup¬ 
planted classical comedies as a text in the schools, and equally 
important it gave rise to another type of drama represented 
by the Studentes of Stymmelius . 5 But it was not upon the 
drama alone that the prodigal story exerted its influence. 
It came to have considerable importance in Elizabethan 
fiction. 

Mr. John Dover Wilson, 6 whose article first directed my 
attention to the occurrence of the prodigal-son story in 
Greene’s writing, has studied Euphues in the light of the 
Acolastus and the Studentes , 7 and on the basis of that 
study has reached the conclusion that in reality Lyly’s 
novel is an example of the prodigal-son story. It was 
he who suggested that the so-called repentant pamphlets 
of Greene also belonged to this class. This latter sugges¬ 
tion I have followed out. In the following pages I shall 
endeavor to set forth the extent of Greene’s use of the 
theme. Before I discuss the influence of the prodigal-son 

4 See The School Drama, including Palgrave’s Introduction to 
Acolastus, in Teachers College Publications, Columbia University. 

By James L. McConaughy. See also Herford, The Literary Relations of 
England and Germany in the Sixteenth Century, Chap. III. 

6 Of this student drama, the Glasse of Government of Gascoigne is 
the notable example in England. 

6 Euphues and the Prodigal Son. The Library, October, 1909, p. 337. 

7 Of course Acolastus is only one of the numerous prodigal-son plays. 
Cf. also Asotus and various English imitations and adaptations. A 
discussion of these may be found in Herford’s Literary Relations. 


56 


ROBERT GREENE 


story at length, however, it may be well to examine the 
Acolastus itself. 

The play has five acts, but the story really falls into four 
parts. At the opening of the play Pelargus, the king, is much 
troubled by the determination of Acolastus, his son, to set 
out to see the world. Eubulus, symbolizing foresight, 
advises him to allow the young man to go. Finally matters 
are arranged. Acolastus is given his share of the inherit¬ 
ance, an abundance of good advice, and a Bible. The 
Bible is soon discarded at the suggestion of Philautus, the 
friend of Acolastus who aroused, in the first place, his desire 
to travel and his haughtiness toward his elders. The father's 
advice is not followed. And as for the “decern talenta,”— 
dissipavit substantiam suam vivendo luxuriose. Acolastus 
travels into a far country, familiar to us and to the sixteenth 
century as the land of classical comedy. There are para¬ 
sites in the land, waiting for such as he. When Acolastus 
comes through the market place, they insinuate themselves 
into his acquaintance and lead him off. He is in a courtezan's 
house. Lais, the beautiful courtezan, ensnares him. He 
orders a great feast, and there is merry-making, and wine. 
The next day Acolastus is cozened of what money he has left, 
and turned naked and penniless out of doors. Lais, with 
whom he had so fallen in love, is the first to rob him of his 
clothes. A famine comes upon the land. Acolastus is in 
great distress. He enters the service of a farmer, who sets 
him to feeding pigs. After a time, he recalls all his father's 
precepts, and goes home. There he is received with great 
rejoicing. Of the five acts two and a half are devoted to the 
second of these four parts, — to the events that transpire 
in the prodigal's scenes of riotous living. 

With such a summary in mind let us turn to Greene's 
prodigal-son stories. By far the most distinctive one from 
the point of view of reflecting this influence is the Mourning 


SERO SED SERIO 


57 


Garment. In this novel a rich old man, Rabbi Bilessi, of 
Callipolis, had two sons. 8 The elder was Sophonos, hand¬ 
some and wise, yet something of a coward. He became a 
merchant with his father. (One wonders what business a 
rabbi was in!) The younger was Philador, also handsome 
and of good wit. He loved company; and he felt his father's 
curb upon his liberty. Philador desired to travel, and 
asked his father's consent (long speech on the advantages 
of travel). The father (long speech) tried to dissuade him, 
but the youth persisted in his request. At last the old man 
gave his consent and the son's portion of the inheritance. 
After the father’s farewell (long speech), Philador set out. 
This so far corresponds to the first part of the play, occupying, 
in the novel, thirteen pages. 9 

Philador visited many lands, always bearing in mind 
his father's precepts; and came at last to Thessaly. He 
could see no town, but a shepherd offered to direct him. 
(Greene digresses to paint a metrical portrait of the shep¬ 
herd and his wife.) The shepherd led him through a vale. 
(Greene's pastoralism leads him astray to have the shep¬ 
herd tell a tale of a shepherd's faithless loving. Possibly a 
part of the prodigal theme, conveyed indirectly as a lesson.) 
They arrived at Saragunta, a beautiful city. The shepherd 
warned him to beware of the Unicorn, at which the three 
beautiful courtezans lived. 10 Philador disregarded the advice 
and went to the Unicorn, where he was courteously enter¬ 
tained, and where he fell in love with the youngest of the 
three sisters. Philador ordered a supper. There was much 
talk on the subject of love. (Corresponding to the Lais 

8 Gnaepheus leaves out the elder son. 

9 There will be noticed the absence of the characters to correspond 
to those of Eubulus and Philautus in the play. 

10 Compare with the old man’s advice to Euphues upon his arrival 
in Naples. Philador, like Euphues, does not follow the advice. 


58 


ROBERT GREENE 


scene of the banquet in Acolastus.) The courtezans began 
to get hold of Philador’s money. He dismissed all of his 
servants but one. One of those dismissed tried to give 
Philador some advice, but in vain. Philador lived on in 
his sin. This is the second part of the story, occupying 
about forty pages (of which fifteen are devoted to the 
shepherd’s tale). 

After a while, there came a famine. Many people died, 
but Philador gave no aid. At last his money gave out, and 
he was obliged to sell his clothes to pay his debts. The three 
sisters seized his trunk and took the doublet from his back. 
(Corresponds to Lais’ taking the clothes of Acolastus.) He 
reviled them and asked the youngest to aid him. She scorned 
him, and had the servants put him of the house and beat him. 
Philador then ldft the city. He wandered long, — tired, 
hungry, and thirsty. Finally he went to sleep. When he 
awoke he began to think of his father’s precepts. (Long so¬ 
liloquy.) A farmer came along. He gave Philador the task 
of feeding his hogs. Philador ate husks with the swine, in 
true prodigal fashion. Finally he decided to go home to his 
father. Here ends the third part of the story, — eighteen 
pages. 

One day on the way home he saw a despairing lover about 
to kill himself. Philador persuaded him from his rashness; 
and left him a scroll containing some aphorisms and an Ode. 
Philador went on. At last, with remorse in his heart, he 
came in sight of his father’s house. He saw his father and 
went to him. The old man wept. Philador confessed his 
folly, and asked to be made a hired servant. His father an¬ 
swered, and forgave him, and gave him a new robe (of black). 
Sophonos would not come in to the banquet which was pre¬ 
pared. The father urged. Sophonos upbraided his father, 
but finally went in to the feast. The shepherds came. 
(Why should shepherds be coming to a rabbi merchant’s 


SERO SED SERIO 


59 


house?) One of them sang a song, and all were merry. So 
ends the fourth and last part, twenty-seven pages. 

Without comment, it can be seen clearly how Greene is 
making use of the prodigal story as it comes down from the 
prodigal plays such as that of Gnaepheus. The proportions 
of his novel are not quite those of the play, but the main 
incidents are the same. 

The Mourning Garment is the only novel which follows the 
prodigal story throughout its length in all details. But other 
novels of Greene follow it in certain parts, and certainly are 
to be classed as belonging to the prodigal-son literature of 
the time. One of Greene’s variations is that to be found in 
Never too Late and its sequel Francescos Fortunes , the two 
novels together making a form of the prodigal story. The 
story opens with a frame-work not unlike that of Arbasto, 
except that the man who does the talking tells, not his own 
story as Arbasto does , 11 but that of one Francesco. The 
palmer’s story does not begin in accordance with the prodigal- 
son story at all. Indeed the whole first part of the prodigal 
story is omitted. There is substituted instead the love story 
of Francesco and Isabel, which is quite in the manner of the 
Italian novelle, and which has certain elements in the last 
part decidedly reminiscent of Greek Romance. The con¬ 
clusion of it all is that Francesco and Isabel were married and 
lived happily . 12 

After Francesco and Isabel had been married for seven 
years, business took Francesco to Troynovant. He intended 
to stay nine weeks, and so, having sold his horse and rented 

11 Unless Francesco and the palmer are one. 

12 Francesco for a time kept a school. Euphues was a scholar. In 
Riche’s tale, “Of two Brethren and their Wives” (Shak. Soc. Vol. XVI., 
p. 127), an old man had two sons. The elder held the lands, the younger 
was trained up in learning. Roberto, in Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit , 
was a student. These may all be remnants from the prodigal-student 
drama. 


60 


ROBERT GREENE 


a room, he worked hard in order to get back to Isabel as 
soon as possible. This, in a regular prodigal-son story, 
would be the end of the first part; but, as we see, there is 
nothing of the prodigal story about it. 

From here on the prodigal story is carried out more or less 
closely. Having settled down in Troynovant, Francesco one 
day sees a gentlewoman at a window (Digression on Courte¬ 
zans). This courtezan desires to entrap him. She succeeds 
in doing so. When Francesco gets back to his room he thinks 
of Isabel. He meditates, but decides to enjoy the company of 
Infida while he is in Troynovant. So many days pass. Once 
he thinks of Isabel, but the virtuous impression is soon gone. 
Meantime Isabel is wondering why Francesco does not re¬ 
turn to her. She hears rumors of the affair with Infida, but 
she construes everything for the best. She writes a letter 
telling of her longing for him. She speaks of their child, 
and hopes it is business and not anger that keeps him away. 
Upon receipt of his wife’s letter, Francesco decides to go 
home. But when he sees Infida, he changes his mind, 
scoffs at the letter, and lives on in sin. Thus three years 
pass. 

So much for the second part of the story. This part cor¬ 
responds very well to that of the prodigal’s sojourn in a far 
land. There is no doubt that Greene got this part of his 
story from another prodigal-son story of the period. The 
whole situation, as M. Jusserand pointed out , 13 came from 
Warner’s story of Opheltes. Opheltes married to Alcippe 
(Francesco married to Isabel) goes to Sardis (Francesco goes 
to Troynovant) where he is entrapped by Phoemonoe, a cour¬ 
tezan (Francesco is entrapped by Infida). Alcippe goes to 
the courtezan’s house where she becomes a servant. Opheltes 
is ruined and turned out of doors. Then when Alcippe reveals 
her identity, the couple are happy. Isabel merely sent a 
13 English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare , p. 150. 


SERO SED SERIO 


61 


letter to Francesco. Greene, as we shall presently see, had 
other adventures in store for her than to enter the courtezan’s 
service. 

Now begins the third part of the story, that of the prodi¬ 
gal’s degeneration. At last, after three years of riotous 
living, Francesco’s money is gone. He asks Infida for a loan. 
She refuses and casts him off. Francesco is very disconsolate 
(long speech), and bitter against courtezans. He makes up 
his mind to go home, and then lies down to sleep. When he 
awakes (we are now in Francescos Fortunes , the Second Part 
of Never too Late), he begins to revile women. He has no 
money. His hostess (not the courtezan this time) sells his 
clothes. He is too proud to work. At last he falls in with — 
not a farmer who gives him a job feeding swine, but a com¬ 
pany of players, for whom he begins to write plays. In this 
capacity he becomes prosperous. Infida, hearing of his 
prosperity, tries to recapture him. But Francesco had learned 
his lesson. 

In the meantime, Isabel had experiences at home. She 
became noted for her virtues. One Signor Bernardo fell in 
love with her, and laid plans to win her. The story is that 
of the modest Susanna made to fit the circumstances . 14 
Greene early in his career had written the Mirrour of Modes - 
tie, a version of the Apocryphal story of Susanna and the 
elders. The theme seems to have appealed to him again, 
for it is the same story that he uses for Isabel’s experiences. 
In many passages, especially in the latter half, the two 
stories are identical, even to the minutest phraseology. 

News of this event comes to the ears of Francesco in 
Troynovant as he sits in a tavern. His conscience hurts 
him, and he goes to his chamber. He sees his folly, and 

14 See Herford, Literary Relations of England and Germany in the 
Sixteenth Century, (Chap. III.) for an account of the influence of the 
modest Susanna theme in the Drama. 


62 


ROBERT GREENE 


writes a poem about it. He prepares to go home. One of 
his friends gives him twelve precepts. 

Thus ends the third part, with the curious combination of 
the prodigal's repentance and — departing from the tradi¬ 
tion — its included account of what happened to his wife at 
home . 15 

After five days Francesco arrives at home. There is no 
aged father to fall upon his neck and weep, but there is his 
faithful wife. Francesco is overcome with remorse (long 
speech). He repents and weeps bitterly. Isabel forgives 
him. They have supper. After supper the host offers to 
tell them a tale. He does so (a light tale) in no less than 
fifty pages! 

So ends the fourth part, after which Francesco and Isabel 
spend the rest of their lives in quiet. 

Having finished the prodigal story, Greene returns to his 
frame-work — about which we have forgotten by this time 
— and has the palmer tell his reasons for traveling about the 
country. He says that he has been in all the cities of Europe, 
and is on his way to Venice. It is his business to draw men 
from Venus. He writes some verses upon the wall and then 
departs. What he did, and how he lived, Greene will, if he 
hears, let us know. 

There is one prodigal-son story left, the Groatsworth of Wit. 
There once lived a wealthy old man who had two sons. The 
old man esteemed the elder as the heir apparent, but ne¬ 
glected the other, who like Francesco was a scholar and 
married to a gentlewoman. At last the old Gorinius became 
very ill. He called his sons in to him and bade them fare¬ 
well. All his goods he left to Lucanio, the elder. To the 
younger, Roberto, he left an old groat wherewith to buy wit, 

15 The Susanna story is substituted for the coming of Alcippe to 
the courtezan’s house. Of course both Warner’s and Greene’s stories 
emphasize the wife’s virtue and the husband’s prodigality. 


SERO SED SERIO 


63 


the reason for this unequal allotment being that one day at 
table Roberto had censured his father and some guests for 
being usurers . 16 Then after some further advice to Lucanio, 
Gorinius died. The scene of which I have just given a 
synopsis corresponds to the first part of the prodigal story . 17 

The second part of the story proceeds as follows. Roberto 
was greatly angered by his father’s bequest and decided to 
get revenge. He went to Lucanio. He flattered him and 
told him he ought to marry. He said he would help him to 
find a wife. Then Roberto took Lucanio to the house of 
Lamilia, a courtezan. Lucanio was ensnared. There was 
music, dancing, supper, and talk. Roberto encouraged Lu¬ 
canio, so that Lamilia’s power was complete. Presently 
Lamilia, Roberto, and Lucanio began to play at dice. La¬ 
milia was winning. Lucanio went to his rooms for more 
money. While he was gone Roberto asked for his share of 
the winnings. Lamilia refused and reviled him for betraying 
his brother. When Lucanio came back Lamilia told him 
how Roberto had set about to betray him. Lucanio became 
very angry, and Roberto was turned out of doors. 

Roberto was in trouble. He had no money. He fell in 
with a man (as in Francescos Fortunes ) who proposed that he 
write plays. Roberto went with the player. Lamilia con¬ 
tinued to hold Lucanio in her power. By the end of two 
years, she had possessed herself of all of Lucanio’s money, 

16 Cassander, in Callimachus’ tale (Euphues and his England , Vol. 
II. Ed. Bond, p. 14) was also a usurer. 

17 Instead of the scene of a young man’s struggle to gain his father’s 
consent to travel and of the young man’s departure, scenes similar to 
that in Groatsworth of Wit came to be substituted. In Euphues and his 
England (Ed. Bond, Vol. II., p. 14) the tale of Callimachus opens in 
the same way. The father dies after giving much advice, and leaves 
the son disappointed in his inheritance. In the prodigal-son story of 
Cassander in the same work (p. 23) the youth starts out to travel after 
he has received his inheritance from the hand of a dying father. 


64 


ROBERT GREENE 


and she dismissed him. Soon Lucanio became a pander, 
and continued so until his death. 

In the meantime Roberto had become famous as a play¬ 
wright. He kept low company, and did not pay his debts. 
He knew all the low people and “ learned the legerdemaines 
of nips, foysters, conni-catchers, crosbiters, lifts, high Law¬ 
yers, and all the rabble of that uncleane generation of vipers; 
and pithily could he point out their whole courses of craft.” 18 
His wife implored him to return. But he would not. He 
had a sister of a villain named Ball for his mistress. 

Finally God’s judgment came, and with it the end of the 
middle part of the story. This middle is something of a 
departure from the tradition. The motive of revenge on 
the part of Roberto is different. Yet it is not altogether 
unlike the attitude of Callimachus (Lyly, Ed. Bond, Vol. 
II., p. 17) who upon finding that his inheritance consisted of 
some words of wisdom sealed up in a chest, fell into “an 
extreame rage, renting his clothes and tearing his haire,” and 
cursed his father’s will. Seeing that curses aided nothing 
he set out to travel. Callimachus, like Acolastus, was an 
only son. Roberto, on the other hand, had a brother against 
whom he could vent his anger. From rage, such as Calli¬ 
machus displayed, to revenge (when revenge is possible) is, 
then, not too great a departure from tradition to have been 
easily made. Having given the younger son the impulse 
for revenge, the traditional scenes of the enticement by the 
courtezan, the supper, music, and talk, the winning away of 
the inheritance then fall to the lot of the elder brother who is 
thus made a prodigal. The dismissal of Roberto by Lamilia 
is of course natural. Lamilia had Lucanio in her power. 
There was no necessity for sharing the profits with Roberto. 
The meeting with the player is taken over from Francescos 

18 Vol. XII., p. 134. References no doubt to Greene’s own conny- 
catching pamphlets. 


SERO SED SERIO 


65 


Fortunes. The imploring of the wife for Roberto’s return is 
also similar to that in Francescos Fortunes, but we hear noth¬ 
ing in this case of what has been happening to her. Nor do 
we know where she is. The idea of having the prodigal 
married and of having his wife anxious for him, we have seen, 
was taken from, or at least is similar to, Warner’s Opheltes. 

Now for the last part. Roberto became very poor — no 
reason is given except that of God’s judgment, although one 
thinks of Rhenish wine and pickled herrings — and he had no 
money to pay his debts. His friends were all gone. He had 
nothing left except the groat his father had given him, 
and he began to think of his father’s legacy. 

Here Greene breaks off his story of Roberto. The rest of 
it is written in his own person. The discussion of this por¬ 
tion of the work is not proper at this time. It belongs later 
in the chapter with the repentances. 

In addition to this group of prodigal-son stories there is one 
other novel which manifests the influence of the story. This 
is the Carde of Fancie, which is interesting not only for the 
unique way in which the story is used but also as showing 
how early (1584) Greene felt the influence of the story. The 
Carde of Fancie is three-fourths romance. 19 A young man, 
a stranger at the court, falls in love with, and is loved by, 
the Duke’s daughter. War breaks out with a neighboring 
Duke (the young man’s father). A rival for the hand of the 
daughter denounces the young man as a spy. Consequent 
difficulties arise. But in the end everything ends well, and 
the couple are happily married. This, as I say, is all ro- 

19 The situation in the Carde of Fancie is similar to that in Riche's 
Sappho Duke of Mantua (Farewell to Militarie Profession , 1581). An 
unknown youth risen to great honor at the court of a Duke falls in love 
with, and is loved by, the Duke's daughter. The Duke is very angry, 
but is reconciled upon hearing that the youth is of noble birth. 

There is a double wedding at the end of both stories. 


66 


ROBERT GREENE 


mance. But the first part of the story is that of a prodigal 
son. This same young man had been unruly in his father’s 
court. Finally he had decided to travel. Having won his 
father’s consent, and having been carefully advised in his 
father’s farewell speech, he had set out. He had spent some 
months in riotous living, had become penniless, had remem¬ 
bered his father’s precepts, had left the scene of his rioting, 
and had gone — not home to his father, but to the court of 
Alexandria, where the romantic adventures already spoken 
of took place. 

Mamillia is the only other novel (aside from Pandosto, in 
which a father gives his son some worldly advice) which 
manifests the prodigal-son influence. In Mamillia we have 
the speech on worldly wisdom repeated three times. Flo- 
rion writes to Mamillia upon her departure from court. 
Gonzaga upon his death-bed makes a long speech to his 
daughter. And a most curious form is that of Pharicles, 
who, as he is nearing Saragossa, names over to himself his 
reasons for wearing his pilgrim’s garb. It is because in 
Saragossa he will find flatterers, courtezans, parasites; he 
will have difficulty in choosing real friends; and so on through 
the catalogue. 

In a discussion of these prodigal-son stories, the question 
of their autobiographical interpretation naturally comes up. 
They have been termed the “repentant” pamphlets, and 
upon them no small amount of our conception of Greene has 
been based. Indeed they have so far entered into our atti¬ 
tude that we can scarcely think of Greene except in terms of 
them, — of them, that is, and of the Repentance. It seems 
to me that we have, for the most part, gone too far in our 
acceptance of the prodigal stories as autobiographical; that 
we have been inclined to read into them too much of auto¬ 
biographical detail from our preconceived notions of Greene 
as a repentant sinner. 


SERO SED SERIO 


67 


In fact I think that the whole idea of repentance in con¬ 
nection with Greene has been a little over-emphasized. The 
theme of repentance was a common one in the prose and 
poetry of the time. It was used over and over again, es¬ 
pecially by the poets, and like many other literary themes of 
the day became to a certain extent conventionalized. 20 I 
am not saying that sinning and repenting were not genuine 
experiences to Greene; perhaps more to him than to some 
others. But to speak of repentance as a “characteristic 
note” belonging essentially to him is to neglect one of 
the popular Elizabethan themes. 

There is one other consideration which has no doubt aided 
in this over-emphasis. The Mourning Garment has for some 
years been recognized as being merely a version of the bibli¬ 
cal story in conformance with the Renaissance tradition of 
Acolastus and the rest of the prodigal plays. But the group 
as a whole has not been so recognized, — a tribute to Greene 
as an imaginative writer that it has not, — and so we have 
centered our attention upon the repentance element of the 
stories rather than upon the fact that they belong to a 
specific type of fiction, and upon the more fundamental fact 
that repentance is an inherent and inevitable element in that 
kind of writing. 

If we examine closely, we shall find that the only radical 
departure in these prodigal stories of Greene to which no 
parallel exists elsewhere in contemporary fiction is that of the 
substitution of the writing of plays for the feeding of swine 
as the prodigal's lot while he is in the far country. This 
element may be, probably is, autobiographical; at least it 
may have been suggested by Greene's experience. But that 
it is not possible on this one detail to base the conclusion 
that the novels in which it is found are also autobiographical 

20 See p. 139 where I have dealt with the subject of repentant poetry 
in connection with the repentant poetry of Greene. 


68 


ROBERT GREENE 


is at once obvious. The particular element, if Greene meant 
it to be such, is merely a biographical detail in the midst of 
a version of the prodigal-son story. 

The question is not, then, that of endeavoring to discover 
what details in certain of Greene’s works represent actual 
details in his own life history; it is rather that of determining 
to what extent the general tone of the so-called repentance 
pamphlets is applicable to their author. In this connection, 
we must remember to ask whether, dissociated from Greene’s 
name, they would suggest anything else than stories on 
the familiar theme of the prodigal son. As a group, I 
see in them nothing more. I can only believe that in pro¬ 
ducing them Greene was writing not autobiography but 
commercial fiction. Not that the two are necessarily 
incompatible, but that the point of view is different. 

If the mood of the prodigal story happened to fit in with 
his own nature, — that is another matter. There is no rea¬ 
son for thinking, because he used pastoral elements in certain 
of his romances, and because he used them artistically and 
effectively, that the current interest in pastoralism did not 
correspond to certain definite tendencies in his own make-up. 
Just so with the prodigal stories. While autobiographical 
inferences must be derived with caution, there is no need of 
going to the other extreme and denying any reflection of 
Greene’s own career in his work. Greene was a sentimental¬ 
ist. It is impossible to believe that when he shut himself 
up alone with pen, paper, Longus, or Acolastus, he forgot 
absolutely about himself. At the same time, “ repentant 
pamphlets” were for him primarily fiction. 

The conclusion which I have stated, that the prodigal 
stories are to be regarded as fiction rather than as autobiog¬ 
raphy, is confirmed, it seems to me, in the statements of 
Greene himself, and in his attitude toward them. At the 
end of Never too Late, he bids us look for its sequel, Francescos 


SERO SED SERIO 


69 


Fortunes , “and after that my Farewell to Follie, and then 
adieu to all amorous Pamphlets.” 21 The Never too Late is 
thus apparently one of the amorous pamphlets. At the be¬ 
ginning of the promised sequel, we are told that if the work 
had not been promised it would never have been written. 
But here it is. Henceforth we are to look for Greene’s pen 
in “more deeper matters.” 22 By the end of the book (p. 229) 
Greene has evidently forgotten his reluctance, for we find 
there that if he has further news he will send us tidings in 
another book. Such a statement seems to invalidate that of 
the preface. But of course the first statement is meaning¬ 
less. Lyly had said the same thing, “I hope you will rather 
pardon for the rudeness in that it is the first, & protect it 
the more willingly if it offend in that it shalbe the laste,” 23 
while he was definitely promising a second part. 24 

While we are waiting for the Farewell to Follie , out comes 
the Mourning Garment , as “the first fruites of my new la¬ 
bours, and the last farewell to my fond desires,” 25 which 
was licensed Nov. 2, 1590. Now if the Mourning Garment 
is the first-fruits of a new life, one wants to know what the 
Never too Late and Francescos Fortunes were, — for they were 
just like it. Yet Greene has deplored these as wanton. The 
impression we get is that Greene had not made up his mind 
in regard to this matter. Perhaps the statements are not 
unlike those we are accustomed to hear in our day of the 
farewell tours of prima donnas and once famous actresses. 

Finally in 1591, as the “ultimum vale” to youthful vani¬ 
ties, appeared the long-heralded Farewell to Follie , Greene’s 
“many yeeres (he was then thirty-three) having bitten me 

21 Vol. VIII., p. 109. 22 Vol. VIII., p. 118. 

23 Lyly. Ed. Bond. Vol. I., p. 180. 

24 “You shall in the seconde part heare what newes he bringeth.” 
p. 323. 

23 Vol. VIII., p. 22. 


70 


ROBERT GREENE 


with experience, and age growing on bidding mee Petere 
graviora .” 26 But even here Greene cannot look upon his 
past work as wholly bad, — including the three ‘‘repent¬ 
ance” pamphlets. His works were “mixed with such morall 
principles,” he consoles himself, “that the precepts of vertue 
seemed to crave pardon.” 27 Of course they could not be so 
bad as to hinder their sale! 

Greene prefixes to the Farewell to Follie the repentant 
motto. It is quite as solemnly pronounced Sero sed serio as 
the rest. But this pamphlet has nothing of repentance in it. 
It is nothing but a frame-work tale of the Omne tulit punctum 
sort. 28 

All of this disbelief that Greene meant anything serious 
by his professions of repentance — at least that his purpose 
in talking about repentance was largely mercenary — in¬ 
cludes skepticism in regard to the experiences related in the 
Vision. All we know about the religious disturbance which 
is supposed to have occurred in 1590 is to be found in this 
one pamphlet. Whether or not Greene had such a disturb¬ 
ance of mind, no one, I suppose, can ever actually know. I 
am inclined to believe that he had not, and to say with Pro¬ 
fessor Greg 29 that there is “a strong suspicion that Greene 
. . . adopted the machinery of repentance by way of ex¬ 
plaining and advertising a change of style.” The Cobbler of 
Canterbury, which was the cause of all the trouble, was pub¬ 
lished sometime in 1590; we cannot tell just when. Now 
Greene’s Orpharion was licensed January 9. There would 
hardly have been time before that for Greene to have been 
burdened with the authorship of the Cobbler of Canterbury 
and to have had the repentance. But the Orpharion — 
written before the Cobbler — concludes thus: “Yet could I 
not hie so fast, but ere I got home I was overtaken with re- 

26 Vol. VIII., p. 228. 2 8 See Chap. II. 

27 Vol. VIII., p. 227. » Mod. Lang. Rev. Vol. I., p. 241. 


SERO SED SERIO 


71 


pentance.” 30 I do not know how to understand this last 
sentence if it is not an announcement of the forthcoming 
series of pamphlets, and if it does not mean that Greene was 
planning the series even before the events supposed to have 
happened in the Vision had occurred. 31 Especially since 
Never too Late, the first of the series, written before the events 
described in the Vision, bears Omne tulit punctum on its 
title-page. Francescos Fortunes, the sequel, is designated as 
Sero sed serio. There is danger, one must admit, of going 
too far to the other extreme: but in view of the evidence at 
hand I see nothing sincere about the whole affair. 

Misplacing of attention away from the real nature of what 
Greene was doing and the consequent searching for autobio¬ 
graphical materials have obscured the significance of Greene’s 
work. That significance, I take it, is the fact that Greene 
was able to treat the prodigal story in an imaginative way. 

The three novels which I have grouped together, from 
their common theme, manifest the same general qualities as 
are shown in Greene’s earlier works. The story was al¬ 
ready formed. In itself it was good; and it had, besides, 
definiteness of treatment from its use in the Latin plays. 
But it did not suffer in Greene’s hands. The ability for 
telling a story which Greene had already acquired was enough 
to sustain interest even in so familiar a theme as that of the 
prodigal son. In characterization these novels are thoroughly 
in accord with Greene’s failure to create living people. The 
prodigals who set off on the journey are all just alike. Phila- 
dor, Roberto, Francesco, Gwydonius, — their places might 
be changed, and no one would be the wiser. Infida and 
Lamilia are different only in their names. 32 

30 Vol. XII., p. 94. 

31 See Chapter on Chronology of Greene’s Non-Dramatic Work. 

32 On the subject of the courtezans in these prodigal stories a word 
is needed. Storojenko and others since his time have alluded to the 


72 


ROBERT GREENE 


Like the romantic pastoral the story of the prodigal son 
offered no clearly recognized outlines to the novelist. It had 
been worked out in the drama into more or less definite form 
as represented by the Acolastus and the Studentes. But 
quite as much as other types of fiction this one was yet in the 
formative stage. There was a general scheme; there were 
suggestions, incentives; yet there was no fixed tradition as 
to the method of narrative treatment. 

Greene took freely of what he found at hand; he was imi¬ 
tative, rather than original, in that respect. But when all is 
said and done, he was an early, not a late, borrower. 
The writing of three or four novels on the prodigal 
motives, even though there was no great difference between 
them, was therefore a noteworthy achievement. How im¬ 
aginative an achievement is well attested by our lack of per¬ 
ception hitherto that Greene was in reality presenting us 
with a type of fiction, and by our failure not only to 
discover unity within the group but to understand the type 
as well. 

The three prodigal-son pamphlets, the Farewell to Follie , 
and the Vision are, then, intrinsically products of Greene’s 
literary imagination. But the Repentance and the concluding 
pages of the Groatsworth of Wit give an impression of greater 
sincerity. Both of them come from the month of the fatal ill¬ 
ness. Both were published after Greene’s death, Groatsworth 
of Wit on September 20, and the Repentance on October 6. 

The last pages of Groatsworth of Wit are undoubtedly the 

bitterness of Greene’s later attitude toward women as compared to the 
earlier attitude shown in Mariana, Sephestia, and the other heroines of 
the romances. I had occasion to speak of this alleged change of front 
in connection with Alcida (Chap. II., p. 25); and I repeat what I said 
there. I see nothing which indicates an added bitterness in Greene’s 
mind. Just as repentance is a part of the material in a prodigal-son 
story, so is a courtezan an indispensable accessory. 


SERO SED SERIO 


73 


most famous of Greene’s writings. They contain, indeed, 
some lines to be numbered among the most famous lines in 
the English language: 

“Yes trust them not: for there is an upstart Crow, beautified with 
our feathers, that with his Tygers heart wrapt in a Players hide, supposes 
he is as well able to bumbast out a blanke verse as the best of you: and 
being an absolute Johannes fac totum, is in his owne conceit the onely 
Shak-scene in a countrie.” 

In addition to the celebrated allusion, the rest of Greene’s 
words are of value. 

Roberto, the hero of what has up to this point been a prodi¬ 
gal-son story, has reached the bottom of his despair. He 
recalls his father’s precepts and knows that it is too late to 
buy the wit he so negligently forgot to buy. His emotions 
overcome him. “Heere (Gentlmen) breake I off Robertos 
speech; whose life in most parts agreeing with mine, found 
one selfe punishment as I have done.” It would help us to 
understand the Groatsworth of Wit if we could know just 
when it was written. But we do not know. It seems reason¬ 
able, however, to suppose that it was begun before Greene 
had realized the seriousness of his disease. “Greene though 
able inough to write, yet deeplyer searched with sicknesse 
than ever heretofore, sends you his Swanne-like song, for he 
feares that he shall never againe carroll to you woonted 
love layes [we thought he had given that up two years ago], 
never discover to you youths pleasures. . . . This is . . . 
I feare me the last I shall write.” He apologizes for 
the condition of the story as an “Enbrion without shape.” 
Then he proceeds with his tale only thirty-four pages, when 
he breaks down. His illness has probably become much 
worse. He is sure that death is upon him. “ Though no man 
be by me to doe me good, yet ere I die, I will by my repent¬ 
ance indevor to doe all men good.” His tendency toward 
sentimentalism grows into morbidness. He condemns him- 


74 


ROBERT GREENE 


self, his past life — which had no doubt been wild enough — 
and his works without distinction. “Ah Gentlemen, that 
live to reade my broken and confused lines, looke not I 
should (as I was woont) delight you with vain fantasies, 
but gather my follies altogether, and . . . cast them into 
the fire. ... 0 that the teares of a miserable man . . . 
might wash their memorie out with me death. . . . But 
sith they cannot let this my last worke witness against 
them with me, how I detest them. Blacke is the remem¬ 
brance of my blacke works, blacker then night, blacker 
then death, blacker then hell.” 

We cannot take such words at their face value, as they 
pertain either to Greene’s works or to his deeds. Gabriel 
Harvey did indeed give Greene a pretty black reputation: 

“I was altogether unacquainted with the man, never once saluted 
him by name: but who in London hath not heard of his dissolute, and 
licentious living; his fonde disguisinge of a Master of Arte with 
ruffianly haire, unseemly apparell, and more unseemelye Company: 
. . . his apeish counterfeiting of every ridiculous and absurd toy: 
. . . his monstrous swearinge and horrible forswearinge: . . . his 
continuall shifting of lodgings: . . . his keping of the foresaid Balls 
sister, a sorry ragged queane, of whome hee had his base sonne, In - 
fortunatus Greene: his forsaking of his owne wife, too honest for such 
a husband: particulars are infinite. . . . He never envyed me so 
much, as I pittied him from my heart: especially when his hostisse 
Isam with teares in her eies, & sighes from a deeper fountaine, (for 
she loved him derely) tould me of his lamentable begging of a penny 
pott of Malmsey; and, sir reverence how lowsy he, and the mother of 
Infortunatus were . . . and how he was faine poore soule, to borrow 
her husbandes shirte, whiles his owne was a washing: and how his 
dublet, and hose, and sword were sold for three shillings: and beside 
the charges of his winding sheete, which was foure shillinges: and the 
charges of hys buriall yesterday, in the New-churchyard neere Bedlam, 
was six shillinges, and four pence; how deeply hee was indebted to her 
poore husbande: as appeared by hys own bonde of tenne poundes: 
which the good woman kindly shewed me.” 33 

33 Harvey’s Works. Ed. Grosart, Vol. I., pp. 168-71. 


SERO SED SERIO 


75 


But Harvey was an enemy. Perhaps Nashe was more nearly 
right. 

“Debt and deadly sinne, who is not subject to? With any notori¬ 
ous crime I never knew him tainted.” 

Greene had lived hard. There is unquestionably much truth 
in the picture that Harvey paints of Greene’s last days and 
of his ignoble death. But so were they all wild. Greene 
was probably no better, no worse, than the rest. These 
young University Wits were somewhat beyond the pale of 
substantial citizenship, anyway. 

Whatever his life had been, Greene’s dying words are not 
literally true. They represent him as a man depraved; 
and Greene was not that. But they reveal clearly the state 
of mind in which he was, — a sensitive being, friendless and 
in poverty, sick unto death, with conscience torturing him 
into anguish through memories of a wasted life. As for his 
works, Greene need not have been so troubled about 
them. 34 

After this self-vituperation Greene writes a letter “to 
those Gentlemen his Quondam acquaintance, that spend their 
wits in making plaies,” with the address to Marlowe, Nashe, 35 

34 “Justice demands the acknowledgment that Greene’s imagina¬ 
tion is entire and undefiled: in all these tales I cannot recall a single 
sneaking allusion or prurient image or lascivious detail.” S. L. Wolff, 
Eng. St., Vol. 37, p. 350. 

Such statements are common among Greene’s critics. Without 
depreciating the purity of Greene’s writings, I think we have been 
inclined to underestimate that of some other writers of fiction. I 
fail to see that Greene stands out in striking distinction to Lyly, Lodge, 
Sidney, or several others that might be mentioned. 

36 Upon the identification of “young Juvenall” much energy has 
been expended — “that by ting Satyrist, that lastlie with mee together 
writ a'Comedie.” For summary of various contentions see McKerrow’s 
edition of Nashe, Vol. V., p. 143. Also Gayley’s Representative English 
Comedies , p. 424, seq., where “A Knack to Know a Knave” is offered 
as a solution for the unknown “Comedie.” 


76 


ROBERT GREENE 


and Peele, and the attack on Shakespeare; a fable of the 
grasshopper and the ant; and finally a letter to his wife, 
committing to her the charge of their son. All three 
reiterate the repentance for sin. 

“Well, my hand is tired, and I am forst to leave where I 
would begin; for a whole booke could not containe these 
wrongs, which I am forst to knit up in some few lines of 
words.” 

The Repentance was published after the Groatsworth of 
Wit. This pamphlet, like the former, “dooth lay open the 
graceles endevours of my selfe.” It is divided into two parts: 
the first being the Repentance; the second, the Life and 
Death. We have the same upbraidings and self-accusa¬ 
tions. “I was the mirrour of mischiefe, and the very pat- 
terne of all prejudiciall actions.” Greene was, too, he says, 
“a meere Atheist,” and a despiser of death. “Tush, what 
better is he that dies in his bed than he that endes his life 
at Tyburne, all owe God a death: if I may have my desire 
while I live, I am satisfied, let me shift after death as I may.” 
And again, “Hell (quoth I) what talke you of hell to me? 
I know if I once come there, I shall have the company of 
better men than my selfe, I shal also meete with some madde 
knaves in that place, & so long as I shall not sit there 
alone, my care is the lesse.” So the young blasphemer goes 
on. 36 

All this was to change: the day of judgment came. With 
it came much grief. 

The second part deals very briefly with a few events of 
Greene’s life, his parents “in the Cittie of Norwitch,” his 

36 “ There was no cryme so barbarous, no murther so bloudy, no 
oath so blasphemous, no vice so execrable, but that I could readely 
recite where I learned it, and by roate repeate the peculiar crime of 
everye particular Country, Citie, Towne, Village, House, or Chamber.” 
Lyly, Euphues and His England. Ed. Bond. Vol. II., p. 24. 


SERO SED SERIO 


77 


early schooling, his dissipation at Cambridge, his travel 
abroad, 37 his going to London, his marriage to “a gentle- 

37 There has never been any doubt expressed as to the actuality of 
this trip, and I do not know that there is necessity for expressing any 
such doubt here. It is interesting to note, however, that there is in 
Greene’s writings not a single reference (with perhaps one possible 
exception) which can be cited as indicating that Greene had any direct, 
first-hand knowledge of the Continent. Even in a case like that in 
his Never too Late (1590) in which an opportunity seems to have been 
created expressly for descriptions of continental scenes, Greene gives 
only the vaguest of generalities. 

The passage referred to (Vol. VIII., p. 20-32) is rather interesting 
in this connection. The palmer, “My native home is England, the 
ende of my journey is Venice, where I meane to visit an olde friend of 
mine, an Englishman.” Then follows, “Sir (quoth I) if I might with 
many questions be not offensive, I would faine be inquisitive to knowe, 
as you have passed along France, Germanie, the Rine, and part of 
Italie, what you have noticed worthie of memorie.” To this the 
palmer answers, “After I had cut from Dover to Calice, I remembred 
what olde Homer writte of Ulysses, that he coveted, not onely to see 
strange Countries but with a deepe insight to have a view into the 
manners of men: so I thought as I passed through Paris, not onely to 
please mine eie, with the curious Architecture of the building, but 
with the diverse disposition of the inhabitantes.” The palmer proceeds 
to speak of the court and the subserviency of the French courtiers, 
and of the amorousness of the French gentlemen. He then turns to 
the Germans. But “Nay stay sir (quoth I) before you passe the 
Alpes, give me leave to holde you an houre still in Lions.” This leads 
to the palmer’s discourse on the French gentlewomen. After this is 
finished, he speaks briefly of a few characteristics of the Germans. 
But he did not become interested in the German customs, and so 
u sicco pede past them over, so that I travelled up as farre as Vienna, 
where I saw a thing worthie of memorie”: not the description of any 
definite scene or observation of national customs, as we might expect, 
but — a hermit in a cell! a hermit who spoke most edifyingly in “rough 
hie Dutch verses”! From the hermit’s cell, says the palmer, he went 
“to Vienna, and from thence coasted up into the borders of Italy.” 

This passage from Never too Late is the only instance of its kind in 
Greene’s works. It seems to have been written especially to reveal 


78 


ROBERT GREENE 


mans daughter of good account, with whom I lived for a while: 
but for as much as she would persuade me from my wilful 
wickedness, after I had a child by her, I cast her off, having 
spent up the marriage money which I obtained by her. 
Then I left her at six or seven, who went into Lincolnshire, 
and I to London.” There is, too, an account of a religious 
experience (not the one told of in the Vision; this one was 
sometime before 1585 or ’86. See Vol. XII., p. 177) which 
occurred in Norwich, when Greene heard the words of a 
minister in Saint Andrew’s Church. 

As to the authenticity of this pamphlet there can be no 
doubt. 38 The problem involved is quite a different one. It 
is the problem of interpretation. Can we, or can we not, 
accept the repentance set forth here (and in the Groatsworth 
of Wit) as sincere? I believe that we can. Greene foisted 

an intimate knowledge of the Continent. Instead it contains only- 
indefinite statements, and those the most commonplace or insignificant, 
such as might easily have been gleaned from books. 

Judging from the works alone, one might well doubt the reality of 
the Italian journey. We must remember, however, that Greene did not 
in any of his novels make use of the element of background. The ab¬ 
sence of specific continental allusions in those stories of which the 
scenes are laid on the Continent is therefore no more noticeable than the 
absence of similar allusions in the few stories whose scene is England. 
In none of his novels did he develop the element of background to 
the extent that he did, for example, in Friar Bacon. 

The Repentance speaks of Greene’s having been in Italy and Spain 
(p. 172). The Notable Discovery has this passage: “I have smyled 
with the Italian ... I have eaten Spanishe mirabolanes .... 
Fraunce, Germanie, Poland, Denmarke, I knowe them all, yet not 
affected to any in the fourme of my life.” Vol. X., p. 6. This pas¬ 
sage resembles one in Euphues and his England. Ed. Bond. Vol. II., 
p. 24. “If I met with one of Creete, I was ready to lye with him. 
... If with a Grecian , I could dissemble. ... I could court it 
with the Italian , carous it with the Dutch-man,” etc., to Egypt and 
Turkey. 

38 See Collins’ edition of Greene. Vol. I., Introduction, pp. 50-53. 


SERO SED SERIO 


79 


upon us a series of prodigal stories under pretext of “reformed 
passions.” In spite of that, I think the final repentance is 
genuine. When a man comes to die, it is a different matter. 
Greene was stricken with remorse. That, to be sure, was 
mostly because he was also stricken with fear. He was 
terrified to his inmost soul. But the cause of remorse does 
not alter its reality. 

“After he had pend the former discourse (then lying sore sicke of a 
surfeit which hee had taken with drinking) hee continued most patient 
and penitent; yea he did with teares forsake the world, renounced swear¬ 
ing, and desired foregiveness of God and the worlde for all his offences: 
so that during all the time of his sicknesse (which was about a moneths 
space) hee was never heard to sweare, rave, or blaspheme the name of 
God as he was accustomed to do before that time.” 39 

When he wrote the paragraph quoted above, Cuthbert 
Burbie, the enterprising young publisher, no doubt had an 
eye to the edifying effect of such a complete repentance. 
At least his details do not agree with Gabriel Harvey’s, 
whose account of Greene’s death is most sordid. The truth, 
it may be, lies between the two. It is, after all, only a human 
picture as we think of Greene, conscience-smitten for his sins, 
renouncing his blasphemy and swearing, asking forgiveness 
of God and the world; at the same time, begging piteously 
for “a penny pot of Malmesy” at the hand of Mistress 
Isam. 

Numquam sera est ad bonos mores via. It may be. But 
for Greene the day never came. Greene had the two ele¬ 
ments in him of the flesh and the spirit, and he could never 
reconcile them. “This good motion lasted not long in mee,” 
is his own comment of the experience at Norwich. A frank 
confession, — and very true, the confession of a weak will 
in terms of the excuse for the return to wrong-doing. The 
impression was vivid while it lasted. So was the final 
39 Vol. XII., p. 184. 


80 


ROBERT GREENE 


repentance. Only then, there was no chance for Greene to 
lose it. 

In concluding this chapter, perhaps we can relieve the 
darkness a little by a characteristic, and almost humorous, 
statement of Greene’s. Here he is on his death-bed, poor 
fellow, trying to pray and condemning himself more severely 
than any other man who would be charitable could con¬ 
demn him. “I was the child of perdition,” is his judgment 
upon himself, and the punishment which will come is just 
and deserved. For his life has been bad and his pamphlets 
wanton. “But I thanke God,” he says, — the old journalism 
instinct reviving, the pride in work accomplished, the desire 
to advertise his wares — “that he put it in my head to lay 
open the most horrible coosenages of the common Conny- 
catchers, Cooseners, and Crosbiters, which I have indif¬ 
ferently handled in those my several discourses already 
imprinted.” 40 

We may summarize this chapter briefly. Its subject 
Sero sed serio is applicable to all the works herein discussed. 
But those works are of two kinds. Never too Late and 
Francescos Fortunes , Mourning Garment , Groatsworth of Wit , 
are prodigal-son stories; Farewell to Follie is a didactic 
narrative of the frame-work kind. Greene’s Vision is an 
account of the repentance which inaugurated the series. All 
of these works I have not considered as different in any 
respect from the writings prepared before 1590. In the 
second class are the last few pages of Groatsworth of Wit 
and the Repentance. 

It is not unlike calling an actor before the final curtain 
just after we have seen him die in the tragedy, to continue a 
discussion of Greene’s works after we have witnessed the 
death-scene. But the actor, even if we are a little startled 
40 Vol. XII., p. 178. 


SERO SED SERIO 


81 


to realize it, is just as much alive as ever. So for our pur¬ 
poses, Greene is still alive and writing. In the latter half 
of 1590 he began that division of his works which deals in 
one way or another with repentance. By the end of the 
next year he had adopted a new motto — “ We are born for 
the good of our country.” 


CHAPTER IV 
NASCIMUR PRO PATRIA 


In 1591 Greene began a series of social pamphlets which, 
at very short intervals, continued to appear for several 
months. The first of these, A Notable Discovery of Coosnage, 
was licensed December 13. In that year also, and licensed 
the same day, appeared another, The Second Part of Conny- 
catching , with still a Thirde and last Part, entered on the 
Stationers’ Register, February 7, 1592. Later were published 
the Disputation Betweene a Hee and a Shee Conny-Catcher, 
the Quippe for an Upstart Courtier, July 21, and the Blache 
Bookes Messenger, August 21. This list should include, too, 
The Defence of Conny Catching, April 21, concerning the 
authorship of which there has been some discussion. 

These pamphlets may, on account of their differences in 
social significance and depth, be divided into two groups; 
one group containing the Disputation and the Quippe, the 
other containing the rest of the works enumerated above. 

Of the pamphlets which constitute the second, and larger, 
group, the three parts of conny-catching belong together. 
Rather, it should be said that the Notable Discovery and the 
Second Part belong together, and that the Thirde Part is 
really only a sort of appendix. 

The Notable Discovery of Coosnage, the first of the series, 
opens with an epistle of eight pages “To the Reader,” in 
the course of which Greene tells of his plan to expose the 
deceits practised upon “yong gentlemen, Marchants, Appren- 
tises, Farmers, and plain Countreymen” by the conny- 
catchers, the sly confidence men of the Capital. There are 

82 


NASCIMUR PRO PATRIA 


83 


two chief abuses in London: the art of conny-catching, 
deceit at cards; and the art of cross-biting, or the extortion 
of money from victims by the pretended (or real) husbands of 
the courtezans. Greene gives a brief account of the origin 
of card-playing, speaks of the evils done to innocent persons 
by the cheaters at cards, and develops his Epistle with an 
explanation of the old Barnard’s Law, 1 or the process of 
cheating at cards. The body of the pamphlet consists of 
setting forth the art of conny-catching (a retelling in different 
terms of the Barnard’s Law) illustrated by two tales; and 
of the manner in which the city harlots aid in “ cros-biting ” 
the silly connies, together with the story of a victim who 
turned the tables. The exposure of these two vices was not 
quite enough to fill up the pamphlet. In conclusion, then, 
there is the exposure of a deceit in no way related to the 
other two, the evil practices of the sellers of coals, illustrated 
by two tales. 

The Second Part contains the “ discovery of certaine 
wondrous coosenages, either superficiallie past over or 
utterlie untoucht in the first.” 2 It reveals the Prigging 
Law (horse-stealing), the Vincents Law (deceit at bowling), 
a discussion of the Nip (who cuts purses) and the Foist (who 
steals with his hand), the Lifting Law (larceny), the Courbing 
Law (hooking linen out of windows), and the Blacke Arte 
(picking of locks). The pamphlet contains nine tales. 
The Thirde Part consists entirely of tales of deceit, the tales 
being ten in number. 

Greene sets forth the purpose of these works with con¬ 
siderable ostentation. His title-pages are no longer bespread 
with the Omne tulit punctum of the romances, or the Sero 
sed serio which announced the repentance of the prodigal 

1 “There was before this many yeeres agoe a practise put in use 
by such shifting companions, which was called the Barnard's Law.” 
Vol. X., p. 9. 2 Title-page to the Second Part , Vol. X. 


84 


ROBERT GREENE 


son. There is instead the patriotic — but not for that 
reason, the less shrewd — Nascimur pro patria. Not con¬ 
tent with printing the motto on the title-page, twice within 
the Notable Discovery itself Greene wishes a most unhappy 
end to these “base and dishonest caterpillars.” He bids us 
farewell, shouting as he goes, vauntingly, loudly that all may 
hear, his new found battle-cry . 3 

The statement of the patriotism which inspired the social 
pamphlets is repeated in the preface to the reader, 

“those mad fellowes I learned at last to loath, by their owne graceless 
villinies, and what I saw in them to their confusion, I can forewarne 
in others to my countries commodity.” 4 

It may be very true as Dr. Wolff 5 says of such statements as 
these that Greene “believed that he was rendering a public 
service,” and that he was carrying on the ideal of the human¬ 
ists that it is the business of a writer to serve the State. 
But I do not think that we do well to say much about the 
humanitarian purpose of these, or any other of Greene’s 
works. In the case of his fiction, Greene was quite as much 
— even more — interested in the production of what would 
sell as of what would edify. The two aims may have hap¬ 
pened sometimes to coincide. But the fact that Greene tells 
us, and insists, that he means to edify cannot hinder our 
notion that at heart he was first of all a pamphleteer for 
profit. So with these social tracts. Greene may have been 
patriotic. There is no incompatibility, necessarily, between 
patriotism and journalistic instinct. What I am saying, 
and here I agree most fully with Mr. W. W. Greg , 6 is that the 

3 Vol. X., pp. 36, 50. 

4 Vol. X., p. 6. Also p. 69, “no pains nor danger too great that 
groweth to the benefit of my countrie;” p. 97, “so I may profit my 
countrimen.” Also Preface to the Third Part. 

5 Eng. Stud., p. 337, Vol. 37. 

0 Modern Lang. Rev., April, 1906, Vol. I., p. 241. 


NASCIMUR PRO PATRIA 


85 


avowed intention for writing the conny-catching pamphlets 
is not to be regarded too seriously. 7 

The relation between the Notable Discovery and the Second 
Part will illustrate my statement. In the first, as we have 
seen, Greene tells us of his plan to expose the wicked arts of 
conny-catching and of cross-biting. In the second, he carries 
on the exposure of other cheating practices, most of which 
are announced in the Notable Discovery (p. 51). But there 
are too, in this Second Part , references which have nothing to 
do with the exposures. These are the references to Greene 
himself and to the first pamphlet. The trade, Greene says, 
is “greatlie impoverished by the late editions of their secret 
villanies” (p. 88). A prospective conny avoids the snare 
with “Maisters, I bought a booke of late for a groate that 
w^arnes me of Card-playing. ... I have forsworne cards 
ever since I read it” (p. 89). Not long afterward, a man 
who had been cozened chanced to come to Greene's chamber, 
“where he found a book of Cony-catching new come out 
of the presse. . . . Sir, said he, If I had seene this booke 
but two dayes since, it had saved me nine pound in my 
purse” (p. 96). 

Greene answers the objection “that some inferred against 
me, which was, that I shewed no eloquent phrases, nor fine 
figurative conveiance in my first booke as I have done in 
other of my workes” (p. 71). 8 And finally he refers to the 

7 Harman tells us on the title-page of his Caveat or Warning, for 
Commen Cursetors (1566? 1567) that he is writing “for the utilitie and 
proffyt of his naturall Countrey.” And again he says in his epistle 
“To the Reader” that “faithfullye for the proffyt and benyfyt of my 
countrey I have don it.” ( The Rogues and Vagabonds of Shakespeare's 
Youth, Ed. by Viles and Furnivall. Shakespeare Library 1907.) 
Greene has several similarities to Harman. 

8 In the failure to use “eloquent phrases” Greene resembles Harman 
when he wrote the Caveat. “Although, good Reader, I wright in plain 
termes — and not so playnly as truely — concerning the matter, 


86 


ROBERT GREENE 


threats that have come to him from the conny-catchers that 
they will “cut off my right hand, for penning doune their 
abhominable practises: but alas for them, poore snakes, 
words are wind, & looks but glances: every thunderclap 
hath not a bolt, nor every Conny-catchers oath an execution. 
I live still, & I live to display their villanies” (p. 70). 9 

All these references to the first pamphlet sound perfectly 
natural, appearing as they do in the second; and we are 
really led to believe that Greene’s works were making con¬ 
siderable of a stir and that he himself was manifesting much 
bravery to continue in such dangerous revelations of the 
underworld. But our belief in the genuineness of the whole 
performance is considerably shattered when we remember 
that in all probability the Notable Discovery and the Second 
Part were published at the same time, 10 and that the refer- 

meaning honestly to all men, and wyshe them as much good as to myne 
owne harte; yet, as there hathe been, so there is no we, and hereafter 
wylbe, curyous heds to finde fauttes: — well, this delycat age shall 
have his tyrne on the other syde. Eloquence have I none; I never 
was acquainted with the muses; I never tasted of Helycon. But 
accordinge to my plaine order, I have set forth this worke, simplye 
and truelye, with such usual words and termes as is amongst us wel 
known and frequented.” (Ed. Viles and Furnivall, 1907, pp. 27-8.) 

Greene’s reason for the simple style is different from Harman’s. 
Whereas Harman declared himself unable to use any other, Greene had 
already manifested repeatedly his ability to do so. His reply to the 
objection made against him is that he thinks a “certaine decorum is 
to bee kept in everie thing, and not to applie a high stile in a base 
subject: . . . Therefore humbly I crave pardon and desire I may 
write basely of such base wretches.” (Vol. X., p. 71.) 

9 Cf. Harman, p. 22. “Now, me thinketh, I se how these pevysh, 
perverse, and pestilent people begyn to freat, fume, sweare, and stare 
at this my booke, their lyfe being laid open and apparantly poynted 
out, that their confusion and end draweth one a pase.” 

10 Both works were licensed 13 Dec., 1591. Both bear the date 
1591 on their title-pages. And they were put out by different publishers. 
It is only reasonable, then, to suppose that both were written about 


NASCIMUR PRO PATRIA 


87 


ences to the former are, therefore, most likely pure fictions. 
This theory is borne out by the mention near the end of the 
Notable Discovery 11 of several of the “laws” exposed in the 
Second Part, — as if the Second Part were already planned but 
there was found to be room for “legering” (cheating with 
coal) in the Notable Discovery — and further by Greene’s 
manner of speaking of the threats and the conny-catchers. 
In the epistle “To the Reader” of the Notable Discovery 
Greene “foresees” the danger that will come to him from 
his exposures. “Yet Gentlemen am I sore threatened 
by the hacksters of that filthie facultie, that if I set 
their practises in print, they will cut off that hande 
that writes the Pamphlet,” 12 a statement in no wise 
different from that in the Second Part as follows: “I know 
I shall have many braves uttered against me for this 
invective.” 13 

Greene, viewed in this light, is not, then, a patriotic 
champion ready to die for a cause. He is a self-advertising 

the same time, inasmuch as by 7 Feb., 1592, Greene had the Thirde and 
last Part on the market. 

11 Vol. X., p. 51. “I omitted divers other divelish vices; as the 
nature of the lift, the black art &. ” 

12 Vol. X., p. 12. 

13 Vol. X., p. 97. Again like Harman. See above, note 9. See 
also Audeley, The Fraternitye of Vacabondes. Ed. Viles and Furnivall, 

p. 2. 

“But if my fellowes do know (sayd he) 

That thus I dyd, they would kyll me.” 

The Printer to the Reader. 

Greene has another point of similarity to Harman. Harman unites, 
he says, for the benefit of the thieves as well as of the country. He 
hopes that “in the world to com they may save their Soules” so that 
his writing “shall do them more good than they could have devised for 
them selves.” (p. 22). Greene puts it thus: “Were it not that I hope 
for their amendment, I would in a schedule set doune the names of 
such coosening cunny-catchers.” Vol. X., p. 12. 


88 


ROBERT GREENE 


journalist. 14 This is not at all to be severe on him, or even 
disparaging. What it means is that our conception of 
Greene must be less serious. Although the conny-catching 
pamphlets do lose some of their sociological value, their inter¬ 
est is not lessened. Instead of regarding their author as an 
ardent defender of the common weal, we are to enjoy him as 
a literary artificer. Two smaller pamphlets — a First and 
a Second Part — sold to two publishers would bring more 
than a larger pamphlet put out by one man. 

There is no doubt that the seriousness with which 
Greene’s conny-catching pamphlets have been regarded has 
come partly at least from certain statements of his in the 
earlier works, statements which have been interpreted as 
meaning that Greene had long contemplated the writing of 
these disclosures. 15 The whole question of the understand¬ 
ing of these passages is, of course, bound up with the ques¬ 
tion of the 1590 religious experience spoken of in the Vision. 
That question cannot be taken up here. 16 But so far as these 
passages and the conny-catching pamphlets are concerned, 
I can see no reason for thinking that there is any definite 
relation between them. 

In the first place, the promise of “deeper matters”does not, 
perhaps, mean anything more than a conventional phrase. 17 

14 The putting out of the conny-catching pamphlets with their dis¬ 
play of patriotism is not the first time in Greene’s life that he adapted 
himself to the occasion. In 1585 when he put out the Planetomachia 
he was “Student in Phisicke.” In 1589, when any pamphlet with 
“Spanish” in its title would sell, Greene was on hand with his Spanish 
Masquer ado under the pretext of adventuring “to discover my con¬ 
science in Religion.” 

15 See Greene, ed. Dickinson, Mermaid Series, 1909, Introduction, 

p. xxvii. 16 See pp. 70-71. 

17 See above, pp. 69-72. Also A Petite Pallace of Pettie His Pleasure , 
Ed. by Gollancz, p. 7. “Thus have I sent you in that book some 
fruits of my former folly, and in this letter the profession of my present 
faith. ... I mean . . . the next Spring to go on pilgrimage.” 


NASCIMUR PRO PATRIA 


89 


In the second place, it does not seem reasonable to think 
that if Greene had had definitely in mind the task 
of writing exposures he would have continued putting out 
pamphlets for which he had to, or at least did, apologize. 

It is possible, to be sure, that the prodigal stories sold 
better than he anticipated, and that he was keeping the 
conny-catching pamphlets in reserve. But it does not seem 
likely, from what we know of Greene, that he would have 
waited for a year and a half (from the middle of 1590 when 
he first promised to do serious writing until the end of 1591) 
to put into effect an idea which had suggested to him a new 
line of work. 

Another consideration which causes me to think that the 
conny-catching pamphlets were written as a journalistic 
venture purely, and not that they were written because 
Greene had definite information to convey in regard to the 
dangerous practices of the metropolis is the fact that the 
inspiration of conny-catching, apparently, (and the material, 
certainly) came from a little pamphlet published in England 
a good many years before. This pamphlet was the Manifest s 
Detection of Dyce Play (1552), from which, to be brief, 
Greene got all he knew about cheating at cards. In his 
Epistle to the Reader, Greene copies verbatim two pages from 
the earlier pamphlet, the very important passage, that is, in 
which the modus operandi of the Barnard’s Law is ex¬ 
plained. 18 This old Barnard’s Law of the Manifest Detec - 

19 Barnard’s Law: — Four persons are required, the Taker-up, the 
Verser, the Barnard, and the Rutter. The Taker-up makes the 
acquaintance of the victim and draws him to a tavern. With him goes 
the Verser, who hath “the countenaunce of a landed man.” They all 
sit down. In comes the Barnard, like an old farmer. The Barnard 
teaches the Verser a “new” card game he has just learned. They 
begin to play for money. If the victim “smoake them” and starts 
away, the Rutter creates a disturbance. A crowd gathers, and the 
Barnard steals away with all the money. 


90 


ROBERT GREENE 


i [ion constitutes without change, except in very minor 
details , 19 Greene’s art of conny-catching in the Notable Dis¬ 
covery, and forms the basis of the long and “pleasant tale of 
the connie-catchers ” 20 in the Second Part. Mum-chance, 
the only game mentioned in Greene, is, in other words, copied 
from a pamphlet forty years old. 

From the Manifest Detection, Greene copies also the 
passage 21 regarding the use of the word “law” among the 
members of the underworld and the passage 22 in which a 
conny-catcher refuses conversion on the ground that no 
man can live honestly. Such borrowings as these, in addi¬ 
tion to that spoken of above, show very definitely where 
the impulse to write conny-catching pamphlets came from, 

19 The principal change is in the names of the persons taking part. 
The following extract from Rowlands is of considerable interest in 
this connection as showing that the names for these parties either 
were numerous at any one time or changed from year to year: “There 
hath beene of late daies published two merrie and pithie Pamphlets 
of the arte of Conicatching: wherin the Author hath sufficiently 
expressed his experience, as also his loue to his Countrie. Neuerthe- 
lesse with the Authors leaue, I will ouerlooke some lawe tearmes ex¬ 
pressed in the first part of Conicatching: whereunto, as the Author 
saith, is necessarilie required three parties: The setter, the Verser and 
the Barnacle. Indeed I haue heard some retainers to this ancient 
trade dispute of his proceedings in this case and by them in a full Synode 
of quart pots it was thorowlie examined and concluded, that there 
were no such names as he hath set downe, nor anie cheating Arte so 
christened as Conicatching. . . . But all this breakes no square, so 
long as we concurre in eodem subiecto.” Greenes Ghost haunting Coni- 
catchers, 1602. Rowlands’ Works, Vol. I., p. 7. Hunterian Club. 

20 Vol. X., p. 91. I do not accept Mr. Aydelotte’s discussion of 
Greene’s borrowing. “In so far as Greene has a literary original for 
his conny-catching books, it is this pamphlet.” (p. 120). . . . “These 
plagiarisms are all in comparatively unimportant passages” (p. 125). 
Oxford Historical and Literary Studies, Vol. I., Elizabethan Rogues 
and Vagabonds. By Frank Aydelotte. 

21 Vol. X., p. 33. 

22 Vol. X., pp. 34-5. 


NASCIMUR PRO PATRIA 


91 


and make me disinclined to believe that they were the 
outcome of any long premeditation . 23 

In connection with the question of the attitude which 
we are to take toward these pamphlets of Greene’s there 
is still another point to be borne in mind. That is his boast 
of the accuracy, and directness of the sources, of his informa¬ 
tion. We may hear Greene’s own words: 

“Though I haue not practised their deceits, yet conuersing by 
fortune, and talking uppon purpose with such copes-mates, hath 
geuen mee light into their conceipts, and I can decipher their qualities, 
though 1 utterly mislike of their practises.” 24 

For such insistence upon the truth of his writing Greene 
may very well have gotten the hint from a work like Har¬ 
man’s Caveat or from Lodge’s Alarum against Usurers, of 
which the authors say that what they write is direct, the 
information of the former obtained from the beggars with 
whom he talked at his gate , 25 that of the latter from personal 
observation or the testimony of victims . 26 Whether these 

23 The haphazard manner in which the Second Part is put together 
is another indication of haste. 24 Vol. X., p. 6. 

25 “I . . . have kepte a house these twenty yeares, where unto 
poverty dayley hath and doth repayre, not without some reliefe, as 
my poore callinge and habylytie maye and doth extende: 1 have of 
late yeares gathered a great suspition that all should not be well. 
... I, havinge more occation, through sicknes, to tary and remayne 
at home then I have bene accustomed, do, by my there abydinge, 
talke and confere dayly with many of these wyly wanderers ... by 
whom I have gathered and understand their depe dissimulation.” Ed. 
Viles and Furnivall, p. 20. 

26 “What is sette downe heere, eyther as an eye witnesse I will 
avowe, or informed even by those Gentlemen, who have swallowed 
the Gudgen.” Lodge. Hunterian Club. Vol. I. 

There are many points of similarity between Lodge’s Alarum against 
Usurers and such works as the Manifest Detection and Greene’s conny- 
catching pamphlets, particularly in the manner in which a victim is 
first approached. 


92 


ROBERT GREENE 


two men are truthful it is not for us to inquire. My belief 
in regard to Greene is that he, taking his attitude from them 
and pretending to be a personal observer, is not necessarily 
so,— from anything that Greene’s pamphlets indicate. 

When one examines closely, one finds that there is really 
very little in Greene’s first three social pamphlets which is 
in the nature of information, and that there is a gradual 
progression in the amount of the narrative portion through¬ 
out the series. The Notable Discovery has a comparatively 
small number of tales, the Second Part increases the number, 
and the Thirde Part consists entirely of stories, — with no 
new “laws” added whatever. 

The increase in the number of included tales is an indication 
that in his conny-catching pamphlets Greene has done the 
same thing that he did in many of his earlier works. Just 
as in Perymedes , for example, where he starts out, avowedly, 
to show us how to spend our time in quiet, but where he 
becomes more interested in his illustrative stories than in 
his frame-work and develops them for their own fiction’s 
sake, so here in these pamphlets he grows to be interested 
in telling snappy tales which are justified by their own 
vivacity and narrative excellence. Harman, for all his 
sociological insight, enjoyed telling the few tales he has 
included, 27 and he told them well. It was characteristic 
of the whole type of pamphleting to include tales. 28 But 
Greene carries the idea farther than it had been carried before 
and farther than it was carried after. That is, in a sense, 
the conny-catching pamphlets come in his hands to be a 
series of frame-work tales. 

To say this is putting it too strongly, of course. Greene 

27 Especially those on pp. 37, 42, 61, 68, of his Caveat, Ed. Viles 
and Furnivall. 

28 See Lodge’s Alarum against Usurers and the works of Rowlands 
and Dekker. 


NASCIMUR PRO PATRIA 


93 


did have a certain body of information to convey. But 
that information does not seem, of necessity, to have been 
obtained from direct knowledge. Indeed, it does not seem 
to have been obtained so at all. If Greene were as well 
acquainted with the vices of London as he would have us 
believe, we are at a loss to understand why it is that he 
knows only one “ cheating law,” and why he should have 
copied that one law verbatim in one portion of his pamphlet 
and have merely varied it slightly in others. And again, 
one is at a loss to understand such passages as those in the 
foot-note 29 if they do not mean that Greene had no definite 
information upon that particular matter. That is, a man who 

29 “Were it not I hope of their amendment I would in a schedule 
set downe the names of such coosening cunny-catchers.” Vol. X., p. 12. 
This setting forth of names was something which Greene was ever 
threatening but which he never performed, even when he knew that 
his recovery was hopeless. The nearest he comes to it is the mention 
by name of Lawrence Pickering of Kent street, brother-in-law to Bull 
the hangman, in whose house the crew is accustomed to meet weekly. 
(Harman describes the weekly meeting.) But as a matter of fact, there 
is no guarantee that Lawrence Pickering (the pickpocket) is not a 
fictitious being 

“by chance fel among cony-catchers, whose names I omit, because 
I hope of their amendment.” p. 31. 

“Pardon me Gentlemen for although no man could better than 
myself discover this lawe and his tearmes, and the name of their 
cheats, Barddice, Flats, Forgers, Langrets, Gourds, Demies, and many 
other, with their nature, and the crosses and contraries to them upon 
advantage, yet for some speciall reasons, herein I will be silent.” 
These “tearmes” are mentioned, but not explained, in the Manifest 
Detection, pp. 27-8 

“they will straight spotte him (the horse) by sundry pollicies, . . . 
which secretes I omit, least I shoulde give too great a light to other to 
practise such lewd villanies.” p. 77. 

“for every sundry fashion thay have a sundry term, but I 
am ignorant of their woords of art, and therefore I omit them.” 
p. 128. See other similar statements, Vol. X., pp. 91, 145, 184, 
172. 



94 


ROBERT GREENE 


can explain nine laws from his own observation surely cannot 
be expected to fail on the tenth. 

Greene’s statement of accuracy, “I have seen, but I did 
not participate,” implies that, though he may never have 
actually helped in conny-catching, Greene knew the lowest 
classes of society and led a wicked life with those companions 
who, he says, “came still to my lodging, and then would 
continue quaffing, carousing, and surfeting with me all the 
day long.” 30 But the statement seems to imply also that 
this acquaintance is the basis for the disclosures about to 
be made. I am not going to deny, in any way, that 
Greene’s life was not praiseworthy and that he did not asso¬ 
ciate with such persons as those of whom he speaks. I am 
making no attempt to build up Greene’s shattered reputation. 
I am only asking whether, after all, we should not deprive 
him, in connection with these conny-catching pamphlets, 
of the title he lays claim to as “comrade of the disreputable,” 
and confer upon him another,— that of being a “literary 
liar.” In short, may the “accuracy” have been manufac¬ 
tured for the sake of the verisimilitude it then, and has since, 
afforded? “I have shotte,” Greene confesses in one of his 
latest writings, “at many abuses, over shotte myselfe in 
describing of some: where truth failed my invention hath 
stood my friend.” 31 

What I have said about Greene thus far in the present 
chapter has been mostly negative, in the way of discarding 
certain views which have been held with regard to him. 
Greene claims, and has been considered, to be original, to 
be serious, to be patriotic. I fail to see wherein we can 
justifiably concede any one of these epithets. 

This portion of his work which we have been discussing, 
I am aware, is usually thought of — however little we may 

30 Vol. XII., p. 178. 

31 Greenes Vision, To the Gentlemen Readers. Vol. XII., pp. 195-6. 


NASCIMUR PRO PATRIA 


95 


agree to Greene’s own description of the rest of it as the 
offspring of Follie — as his most genuine, most earnest prod¬ 
uct. I formerly held this opinion. “Once into the thing,” 
I wrote, “Greene goes to work with zest. For the first time, 
perhaps, in his life, he is really in earnest. All his faculties 
are awakened, and he enjoys the conflict he has on his 
hands.” 

But there is this fact about a continued study of Greene. 
The more one knows of him, the less one finds that is sincere, 
that comes from depth of character, from bigness of attitude 
toward life, from definiteness of personality at all,— the less 
one finds that is in reality Greene’s; the more one finds that 
is only a new expression (and often not very new either) of 
some one else’s thought and plan and purpose. 

The becoming aware of the state of things cannot, how¬ 
ever, be called exactly a disillusionment. For it is not 
disillusionment, even when one by one the attributions to 
Greene’s own originality grow smaller and smaller, as 
scholars investigate the sources of his work and as we cease 
to be surprised when we learn that a pamphlet or a plot we 
thought to be his is only a copy or an imitation of another’s. 
It is very necessary, though, if such a process as that I 
speak of is not to result in utter disregard for Greene, to 
formulate our conception of him in a way such as will enable 
us to look beyond the mere borrowing and imitating and to 
unify these various activities of his and make them, for all 
their superficiality, have some significance. If we cannot 
judge him on the basis of a sober litterateur, for the reason 
that he is, on that basis, unstable, intangible, we can at 
least estimate him as a man of letters who sometimes rose 
almost to the plane of artistic writing, who sometimes fell 
to the plane of cheap journalism. In this second class I 
should place the pamphlets we have been discussing. In 
fact, I should say that in none of his other work is Greene 


96 


ROBERT GREENE 


so much the charlatan as in these social pamphlets of the 
first group. 

We have seen Greene’s methods and his attitude as they 
are revealed in the three parts of conny-catching. It is time 
now to turn to the later works. 

On April 21, 1592, there was entered on the Stationers’ 
Register “The Defense of Conny Catching, or A Confuta¬ 
tion of Those two injurious Pamphlets published by R. G. 
against the practitioners of many nimble-witted and mys- 
ticall Sciences. By Cuthbert Cunny-catcher.” The author 
pretends to be a “Licentiate in Whittington Colledge,” 32 
and promises to tell what he has learned in that place and in 
his subsequent travels about England. He is very angry, he 
says, that Greene should have omitted entirely the many 
grosser evils which abound in London, and he is going to 
undertake the task with which he thinks Greene should 
have been occupied. 

Of real exposition, however, there is very little in the 
book. Cuthbert Cunny-catcher seems to have been unin¬ 
terested in his subject itself, or else to have had little direct 
information to convey. What knowledge he had, he gives 
indirectly. The bulk of the material is comprised in six 
stories, clever in themselves, and not different from those 

32 The author of the Defence took the idea from Greene’s mention 
of Whittington College in the Preface to the Last Part. “In the time 
of king Henrie the fourth, . . . lived a worthie Gentleman . . . 
called sir Richard Whittington, the founder of Whittington Colledge 
in London.” Vol. X., pp. 139-40. 

From a gloss in the margin, “Newgate builded by one Whittington,” 
it is clear that he means the Newgate prison rebuilt by Whittington’s 
executors, and not the Whittington College proper also established 
by his directions, which Greene had in mind in the Last Part. (Founded 
1424; suppressed 1548) For article on Whittington see the Dictionary 
of Nat. Biog. Whittington was the subject of popular tradition, 
which may account for the mention of him here. 


NASCIMUR PRO PATRIA 


97 


of the three parts of conny-catching. Indeed, taken out of 
the frame-work in which they occur, or found in any of the 
other pamphlets known to be Greene’s, these six tales would 
pass readily for Greene’s own. 

One of them, the tale of Will Sommers, is an adaptation of 
the old story of the division of a nut among the disputants 
for it, telling how the fool as arbitrator divides the nut-shell 
between two lawyers, and bestows the kernel upon a friend 
of his, the “Yoeman of the Pantry.” Another is a tale of a 
usurer and of how the wife of his victim secured her revenge; 
one of a miller and a boy who discovers his trickery; a fourth, 
of a false tailor whose deceit is revealed by pretended 
necromancy. The remaining two deal with marriage, one 
showing how a pauper’s son under disguise manages to 
marry a rich man’s daughter; the other being the story of a 
man in England who has sixteen wives, and of the means 
by which he meets his punishment at the hands of two of 
them. 

The story of Will Sommers, the fool, is insignificant. 
That of the pauper’s son is good until near the end. There 
the story is stopped rather than finished, so that the conclu¬ 
sion is far from satisfactory. 33 The other four tales are of 
some merit. They are told with the firmness and directness 
which characterize the good examples of the novelle, and 
they carry the reader with them whether in the spirit of 
comedy, as in the stories of the miller and of the tailor; or 
of revenge, as in the stories of the usurer and of the man 
with the many wives. All four are genuinely interesting; 
all four are told with skill. 

For all that the pamphlet is made up principally of these 

33 At the discovery of her new husband's estate, the “wife began 
to weepe, all was dasht, and what she thought God knowes.” . . . But 
they could not change matters; so “for al that he had the wench.” 
Vol. XI., p. 84. 


98 


ROBERT GREENE 


six stories, the Defence of Conny-catching is, however, osten¬ 
sibly an attack upon Greene. The author brings a severe 
charge, that Greene might have been better employed with 
exposing these great and far-reaching vices than with 
writing against the “ poore conny-catchers” who are, when 
the worst is said, only as gnats compared to elephants. 
Cuthbert is, therefore, to champion his fraternity against 
the common enemy. 

He is not a particularly valiant defender. His attack is 
by no means venomous. The method which he uses is that 
of shouting abusive language 34 and of hurling taunts at 
Greene because he did not include these very important 
exposures in his books. 35 The ardor he displays is assumed, 
not genuine. In fact, this very quality of non-abusiveness 
(clearly perceivable, even beneath the show of invincible 
hatred), has linked Greene’s own name with the pamphlet 
under the view that Greene and Cuthbert Cunny-catcher 
are one and the same person. 

Dr. Grosart has included this pamphlet in his collection of 
Greene’s works, 36 but he does not believe that Greene is the 
author of it. He is positive in his belief. “The most super¬ 
ficial reading of the clever ‘Defence’” he says, “would 
have shown that it is against not by Greene.” 37 If the 
reading were superficial enough, we may grant that the 

34 As for example: “I meane to have a bout with this R. G. and to 
give him such a veny, that he shalbe afrayd heereafter to disparage 
that mysticall science of conny-catching.” p. 47. 

“I cannot but wonder maister R. G. what Poeticall fury made you 
so fantasticke, to write against conny-catchers? Was your brain so 
barren that you had no other subject?” p. 49. 

35 “Why write you not of these Conny-catchers maister R. G.?” 
p. 52. “Was not this Miller a Conny-catcher maister R. G.?” p. 68. 
“I pray you call you not these fine witted fellowes Conny-catchers 
Maister R. G.?” p. 75. 

36 Vol. XI., pp. 39-104. 


37 Vol. XI., p. 40. 


NASCIMUR PRO PATRIA 


99 


Defence might be so understood. But as I have intimated, 
the combativeness is very slight indeed. To the support of 
Grosart comes Prof. H. C. Hart in his notes on “Robert 
Greene’s Prose Works.” 38 Professor Hart does not believe 
the attack upon Greene to be in any way more than sheer 
pretence. But he maintains that Greene is not the author 
of the Defence on grounds which he believes to be sufficient 
evidence for a decision. With the exception of Professor 
Hart’s notes the question of authorship has received no 
discussion. It may be worth while, therefore, to deal with 
the problem here, for I do not agree with Professor Hart 
that the case has been definitely settled against Greene. 

Professor Hart notices in the first place that the Defence 
is written against “those two injurious Pamphlets,” when 
there are in reality “the three parts of Connie Catching and 
the Disputation.” He believes that the writer of the Defence 
lumps the first three as one, counting the Disputation as the 
second. Without saying so, he lets us infer that he considers 
this discrepancy as an objection to Greene’s authorship. I 
do not see how the reference to the “two” pamphlets 
rather than to three or four has anything to do with the 
question of authorship. But even if it has, I cannot agree 
to this disposition of the pamphlets. The Disputation is 
not entered on the Stationers’ Register, but there is no 
reason for believing that it was necessarily written before 
April 21, the date of the Defence , and not between that date 
and July 21, the date of the Quippe. This makes the 
Disputation and the Quippe contiguous in date as they are, 
indeed, in significance, and leaves then only three pamphlets 
appearing before the Defence. But even with these three, 
there is no difficulty in explaining the two on the title-page 
of the Defence. Only the first two parts contain exposures 
of deceits. The Last Part is made up wholly of stories. 

39 Notes and Queries. 10th Ser. V., p. 84, Feb. 3, 1906. 


100 


ROBERT GREENE 


There was thus no reason for including the Last Part among 
the “ injurious pamphlets published by R. G.” Professor 
Hart’s objection is, therefore, without value until the date 
of the Disputation is established. 39 

If the Defence is really by Greene, Professor Hart expects 
to find some mention of it in Greene’s later works. He does 
not give the basis for his expectation. Again I find no per¬ 
ceivable relation between Greene’s failure to mention the 
Defence in his subsequent works and Professor Hart’s state¬ 
ment that he did not write it. The Quippe contains no men¬ 
tion of the Disputation , which certainly preceded it. 40 Nor 
does The Blache Bookes Messenger , the last of them all, 
mention either the Disputation or the Quippe. Why should 
Greene’s later work, then, be expected to mention the 
Defence ? And what justification have we for saying that 
the failure to do so is an adequate basis of decision? 

So far as Professor Hart’s next point is concerned, that 
of the celebrated reference to Greene’s having sold the play 
of Orlando Furioso to the Lord Admiral’s men while the 
Queen’s players, to whom he had sold it earlier, were in the 
country,— the failure on Greene’s part to refute the charge 
cannot, it seems to me, be taken to prove that Greene did 
not write the Defence. “No doubt,” says Professor Hart, 
“every one knew it, and it was useless to attempt to do so.” 

39 In the Disputation Greene mentions only the first of the series. 
“R. G. hath so amply pend them doune in the first part of Conny- 
catching ” (Vol. X., p. 206). Also, “since the setting out of my booke” 
(p. 236). 

Samuel Rowlands mentions only two: “There hath beene of late 
daies published two merrie and pithie Pamphlets of the arte of Coni- 
catching.” Greenes Ghost Haunting Conicatchers. 1602. Hunterian 
Club, p. 7. 

40 The Quippe was licensed July 21. Greene's activities and his 
illness during the month of August make it impossible that the 
Disputation followed the Quippe. 


NASCIMUR PRO PATRIA 


101 


It is quite as reasonable to believe that the play was not re¬ 
sold at all. We have only Cuthbert Conny-catcher’s word 
for it. May not the reference be merely another of the 
kind used in the Second Part to give an air of verisimili¬ 
tude to the attack? 

The final objection to Greene’s authorship is a list of 
words and phrases to be found nowhere else but in the 
Quippe. The presence of the words in the Quippe cannot, 
of course, be taken as a final argument either for or against 
Greene’s authorship of the Defence. If Greene had wanted 
the words in the Quippe , he would have taken them whether 
the Defence were his own or belonged to some one else. But 
as for the Defence , Professor Hart concludes on the basis 
of this word list that Greene did not write it, saying that 
“it was written by some confederate or friend jointly 
perhaps.” 

This word list is of considerable importance. The presence 
of many of the words in the Quippe, however, detracts from 
its decisiveness. Greene’s habit of miscellaneous appro¬ 
priations makes his vocabulary variable. How are we to 
tell whether this pamphlet of the Defence was written “by 
some confederate or friend” whose identity is unknown, or 
by Greene himself, who interspersed it with words picked 
up from some unknown source? It is not necessary to 
look for these strange words in Greene’s works before 
April 21, 1592. And when we come to examine the later 
ones, we actually do find many of the words repeated in 
the Quippe. 

Professor Hart admits that the Defence is not in reality, as 
Dr. Grosart said it was, against Greene, and that the attack 
is only a pretence. He thinks that perhaps Greene had a 
hand in the production of it. Having gone so far in the 
acknowledgment of Greene’s authorship, I do not see why 
we cannot go the rest of the way, at least tentatively. 


102 


ROBERT GREENE 


There are no objections which can be held with certainty. 
And there are considerations which I believe make it more 
reasonable than not to regard Greene as the author. 

There is a statement in the Second Part which favors the 
idea of Greene’s authorship. 

“ . . . they in their huffes report that they have got one ( ) I 

will not bewray his name, but a scholler they say he is, to make an 
invective against me.” 

Now the Second Part was published in 1591, at the same time 
as the Notable Discovery . 41 It looks a little strange, there¬ 
fore, if Greene was not himself contemplating the writing 
of the Defence, that he should have known, in the week or 
two before his pamphlets had had time to create any appre¬ 
ciable effect, that the conny-catchers had employed a 
scholar 42 to come to their defence. Nor does it seem at 
all far-fetched to presume that Greene is taking the oppor¬ 
tunity to advertise the Defence just as he advertised a great 
many of his works before and after, and just as we shall 
presently find the author of the Defence doing. 43 

41 See p. 85 seq. 

42 In the Defence Cuthbert speaks of Greene as a scholar. “ I began 
to enquire what this R. G. should bee. At last I learned that hee was 
a scholler, and a Maister of Artes.” p. 47. Greene was proud of being 
a “scholler” and of his “Utriusq. Academiae in Artibus Magister.” 
One can easily infer that if Greene is announcing an anonymous work 
by himself, he would very naturally proclaim it to be by a “scholler.” 

43 This idea of advertisements and continuations appealed to Greene’s 
journalistic instinct. After Pharicles departed from Padua at the end 
of the First Part of Mamillia, “as soone as I shal either hear, or learn 
of his aboad,” says Greene, “looke for newes by a speedy Post.” The 
“newes” came, and with it came the Second Part of Mamillia. It is 
one of the interesting things to note in connection with this idea of 
continuations that, at the end of the Second Part, Greene promises 
still a Third , a promise not fulfilled, so far as we know. (“ Whether 
Pharicles proved as inconstant a husband as a faithless wooer, I knowe 


NASCIMUR PRO PATRIA 


103 


A second consideration that connects Greene and the au¬ 
thorship is that of certain similarities between the Defence 
and Greene’s acknowledged works. One of these is the identity- 
in tone between the reference to the Notable Discovery and 
the Second Part in the Defence, and the references to the 
Notable Discovery in the Second Part. 4 * A second similarity 
is that existing between a passage in the Defence and one 
in the Disputation ; 45 still a third is that between the Defence 

not: but if it be my hap to heare, looke for newes as speedilie as may 
be.”) Other novels by Greene have this same promise of continuation, 
sometimes fulfilled, sometimes not: Morando, Vol. III., p. 109; Pen¬ 
elopes Web, Vol. V., p. 233 (but it is not known what Greene means 
by his reference to the “Paraphrase”); Perymedes, Vol. VII., p. 85; 
Never too Late , Vol. VIII., p. 109; Francescos Fortunes, Vol. VIII., p. 229, 
promises further news of the palmer; Farewell to Follie , Vol. IX., p. 348, 
is sometimes understood to imply a continuation. 

The instinct for journalism which prompted these continuations 
was also manifested in the promise of other works soon to appear. 
Thus in the Preface to Perymedes, Greene speaks of Orpharion to make 
us merry with at the next term (Vol. VII., p. 9). At the end of Never 
too Late (Vol. VIII., p. 109) he promises not only a continuation in 
Francescos Fortunes, but also alludes to his Farewell to Follie. The 
Disputation definitely promises the Blacke Booke, Vol. X., pp. 225, 236. 

44 For example these passages: 

1. “Yet I have for 3. pence bought a little Pamphlet, that 
hath taught me to smoke such a couple of knaves as you be.” 
Defence, p. 45. 

2. “Maisters, I boughte a booke for a groate that warnes me 
of Card-play.” Second Part, p. 89. 

See also Defence, p. 47. 

45 1. “I got one of those bookes . . . wherein I found our art 
so perfectly anatomized, as if he had bene practitioner in our 
facultie forty winters before.” Defence, pp. 45-6. \ 

2. “I need not describe the lawes of villanie, because R.fG. 
hath so amply pend them downe in the first part of Conny- 
catching, that though I be one of the facultie, yet I cannot 
discover more than hee hath layde open.” Disputation , 

p. 206. 


104 


ROBERT GREENE 


and The Blache Bookes Messenger . 46 And lastly there is 
the resemblance between one of the stories in the Defence 
and the story of Valdracko in Planetomachia. The likeness 
may be purely coincidental. At any rate, Pasylla’s tying 
her father to his bed is repeated in the story of the man 
with the sixteen wives, two of whom tie him to his bed in 
the same way. 

The next indication of Greene’s authorship of the Defence 
is in the method of its conclusion. The idea of advertising 
a following pamphlet is carried out. “It is informed us,” 
says Cuthbert, “that you are in hand withe a booke named 
The repentance of a Conny-catcher.” This work is the same 
as that mentioned in the preface to The Blache Boohes 
Messenger which Greene had intended to publish along 
with the life and death of Ned Browne, and which he still 
intended to put forth. 47 In another respect the conclusion 
to the Defence is interesting. It is marked by a strikingly 
paradoxical tone. Throughout the work, the author has 
been professedly Greene’s bitter enemy. At the end he 
urges Greene most heartily to publish this repentance he 
has in mind. “If you doe so, ye shal do not onely a chari¬ 
table, but a meritorious deed.” And he threatens that if 
Greene fails to do so, he will have the “crue of Conny- 
catchers sweare themselves your professed enemies for ever.” 

46 The passages are about the Conny-catchers’ pretended acquaint¬ 
ance with the Continent, whereas they have never been out of England. 
They are too long to transcribe. See Defence, pp. 74-5, and Blache 
Bookes Messenger, pp. 24-7. 

47 “I had thought to have joyned with this Treatise, a pithy discourse 
of the Repentance of a Conny-catcher lately executed out of Newgate, 
yet forasmuch as the Methodeof the one is so far differing from the other, 
I altered my opinion, and the rather for that the one died resolute and 
desperate, the other penitent and passionate. For the Conny-catchers 
repentance which shall shortly be published, it containes a passion of 
great importance.” 


NASCIMUR PRO PATRIA 


105 


It may be said in connection with the Defence as a whole 
that if Greene wished to write another conny-catching 
pamphlet he would scarcely have gone to all this trouble of 
posing as his own enemy, and that he would have put out a 
Fourth Part or something of that nature. Yet we have 
only to remember that in the Disputation , which we shall 
discuss presently, Greene actually does write from the point 
of view of those whom he is attacking. For in the Dis¬ 
putation, Lawrence and Nan are quite as bitter against the 
“scholler” R. G. as ever Cuthbert Conny-catcher was. 

In concluding this matter I should like to call attention 
to what is apparently a step in the Greene-Harvey-Nashe 
quarrel. 48 The quarrel was already on its way when Richard 
Harvey in 1590 published his Lamb of God in which he 
attacked Nashe as being impudent. Then, as Mr. Mc- 
Kerrow says, “some two years seem to have elapsed before 
any attempt was made by the writers criticised to reply.” 49 
There is no explanation for this long silence. “But there 
seems to be nothing/’ Mr. McKerrow adds, “in any of 
Greene’s works at least, before the Quip, which can be 
interpreted as a hit at him. It is possible that there were 
intermediate links in the quarrel, of which we know nothing.” 
It is one of these intermediate links that is to be found in 
the Defence . 

“Wert not a merry jeast to have a bout againe Maister R. G. with 
your poetical Brethren: amongst the which one learned Hypocrite, 
that could brooke no abuses in the Commonwealth, was so zealous 
that he began to put an English she Saint in the Legend, for the holinesse 
of her life: and forgot not so much as her dogge, as Tobies was remem- 
bred, that wagged tayle at the sight of his olde Mistresse. This 
pure Martinist (if he were not worse) had a combat betweene the flesh 

48 Mr. McKerrow, in his edition of Nashe (London 1904-10) has 
traced out in detail (Vol. V., pp. 65-110) the account of this whole 
wretched affair. 

49 McKerrow’s Nashe, Vol. V., p. 77. 


106 


ROBERT GREENE 


and the spirite, that he must needes have a wife, which he cunningly 
conny-catcht in this manner. A pleasant Tale how a holy brother 
Conny-catcht for a Wife. 50 

The story which follows of the pauper’s son who married 
the rich man’s daughter is no doubt fictitious. But the 
story and the passage I have quoted were meant in all 
probability as a slur upon the Harveys, Richard in particular. 
That this inference is well grounded is shown by two similar 
references to Richard Harvey in subsequent pamphlets: 

1. “The best is, the persons abused, are not altogether unknowen, 
they have not so evell a neighbor, that ever reade, or hearde those 
opprobrious villainies (it is too-mild a name, for my brother Richardes 
most abhominable Legend, who frameth himselfe to live as chastely 
as the leawde writer affected to live beastly) but hath presentlie broken 
out into some such earnest, or more passionate speeches: o pestilent 
knavery, who ever heard such arrant forgeries, and ranke lies?” 
Thirde Letter , September 8 and 9, 1592. Harvey, Ed. Grosart, Vol. I., 

p. 186. 

2. “It was not for nothing brother Richard, that Greene told 
you you kist your Parishioners wives with holy kisses, for you that 
wil talk ... in a Theological Treatise, and in the Pulpit, I am 
afraide in a privater place you will practise as much as you speake. 

. . . Farewell uncleane Vicar, and God make thee an honest man.” 
Foure Letters Confuted, January 12, 1593. Nashe, Ed. McKerrow. 
Vol. I., p. 273. 

The passage to which Nashe refers is no doubt the lost 
passage in the Quippe ,in which Greene attacked all the 
Harveys at once. It is clear at any rate, that Greene did 
accuse Richard Harvey of loose living. My conviction is 
that we have here in the Defence , three months before the 
publication of the Quippe, the same kind of attack (or 
perhaps the same attack) as that which Nashe has in mind. 

I do not wish to be understood, in passing from the 
Defence to the last pamphlet of the first group, as thinking 
50 Vol. XI., p. 79. si Nashe, Vol. V., p. 77. 


NASCIMUR PRO PATRIA 


107 


that the intrinsic importance of the Defence is entirely 
proportional to the length of the discussion bestowed upon 
it. But tedious as it is, such a discussion is not without 
value as emphasizing what I believe is the method back of 
all of these social pamphlets of Greene’s. The very fact 
that there is a problem of authorship connected with the 
Defence only urges the more strongly the idea that Greene’s 
work is not the product of a serious, patriotic purpose to 
convey definite, accurate information. Rather we owe the 
existence of the pamphlets to Greene’s necessity. Nashe 
tells us that “in a night and a day” Greene would have 
“yarkt up a Pamphlet as well as in seaven yeare” . . . and 
this too because “his only care was to have a spel in his 
purse to conjure up a good cuppe of wine with at all 
times.” 52 Nashe knew Greene pretty well. 

The Blacke Bookes Messenger is the last number of the 
first group. It was licensed August 21, 1592, and was 
published as a substitute, or messenger, for the Blacke Book 
itself which was announced in the Disputation , 63 Greene’s 
illness prevented his preparing the Blacke Book , which from 
his account of it in the Disputation was to have contained 
a full list of the vices and the names of all the wrong-doers 
in the Capital. The Blacke Bookes Messenger was written 
before Greene’s fatal illness came upon him, and was sent 
“as a Fay ring” until such time as Greene should have 
recovered. 

In this work Greene lays open “the Life and Death of 
Ned Browne, one of the most notable Cutpurses, Cros- 
biters, and Conny-catchers, that ever lived in England.” 
The pamphlet is in the first person and represents Ned 
Browne “standing in a great bay windowe with a halter 
about his necke ready to be hanged.” Ned Browne is brazen 

52 Nashe, Vol. I., p. 287. 

53 Vol. X., pp. 225, 236. 


108 


ROBERT GREENE 


in the face of death. He tells his listeners that they need 
not expect to hear a repentance, for he will be resolute to 
the end. 

We have an account of Ned’s childhood and of the virtues 
of his parents. We are told of how he was always a dis¬ 
obedient son, and of how he early started on the way to 
villainy, disregarding the advice of his parents, blaspheming 
God, and following after the wickedness of the world. The 
pamphlet, only thirty-seven pages in all, contains five tales 
occupying twelve pages by which Ned illustrates the course 
of his life. Now he deceives a maltman, now he outwits a 
priest, now he kisses a gentlewoman and cuts her purse, 
now he lets fall a key, and lastly he tells how his wife was once 
cross-bitten in her own art. Between the tales Ned mentions 
various of his exploits, how he robbed a church, for example. 
Having finished his autobiography, he springs out of the 
window and dies. After he is buried, a company of wolves 
come in the night-time, tear him out of his grave, and eat 
him up. 

Greene evidently forgets all about Ned’s determination to 
persevere in the attitude of non-repentance which he uttered 
so boldly on the opening page of the book. For the cutpurse, 
the worst that ever lived in England, preaches a vehement 
and orthodox sermon just before he leaps from the window. 54 
All his defiance is gone. He would have us trust not in our 
wits, in our strength. We are to follow the good counsel of 
our friends, harken to God’s ministers, scoff not at the 
magistrates, beware of strange women, who are the Sirens 
which draw us on to destruction. 

What a show we have! Ned Browne is only a pup¬ 
pet, a mechanical figure dressed up, with a halter about 
his neck. There he stands, totally without life, a ven- 

64 In Painter’s tale, the Countess of Celant “ miserably and repent¬ 
antly died,” and asked the people to pray for her. 


NASCIMUR PRO PATRIA 


109 


triloquist’s doll whose mouth is pulled open and shut by 
strings. When the speech is over, Ned is pitched out. 
But nobody cares. It was only an entertainment any¬ 
how. 

The quality of entertainment is characteristic not only 
of The Blacke Bookes Messenger but of the whole series. 
We have already pointed out that there is in the first three 
pamphlets a diminution in the amount of information to 
be conveyed, and an increase in the amount of illustration, 
so that the Last Part contains nothing else. The Defence 
and The Blacke Bookes Messenger continue in the same 
kind of development, both in the inclusion of tales and in the 
fiction of the frame-work too. “ Obviously,” as Professor 
Chandler aptly remarks, “in these pamphlets Greene was 
progressing from an account of rogues’ tricks to the more 
interesting business of using rogues as anti-heroes in fic¬ 
tion .” 55 Greene, the exposer of social vices, that is, had 
little to say; Greene, the teller of tales, had much. It 
does not follow, as one might think, that to speak of Greene’s 
conny-catching pamphlets as the product of his tastes, and 
necessity for journalistic activity, is to deprive them of their 
importance. Indeed, so speaking of them only calls our 
attention to the real interest, which is not sociological but 
dependent upon the illustrative tales as examples of Eliza¬ 
bethan narrative art. 

The stories are somewhat allied to the stories of the jest- 
books so common before and after the time of Greene . 56 This 
relation is especially true in connection with the emphasis 
upon the trick, the performance of a clever deed. But Greene’s 
collections are different from these. They have not the 
unity to be found in a jest-book like the contemporary Merrie 

65 The Literature of Roguery , by F. W. Chandler. Vol. I., p. 98. 

66 See Chandler, Literature of Roguery , Vol. I., p. 59. Also Cambridge 
History of English Literature , Vol. III., for bibliography. 


110 


ROBERT GREENE 


Conceited Jests of George Peele , 57 wherein we gain some 
definiteness of conception of the roguish hero; nor do they 
have the anecdotic quality of the earlier collections like the 
C. Mery Talys (1526). There is not in Greene’s stories the 
personal element of the former, in that Greene’s men and 
women are almost as uncharacterized as the absence of their 
names indicates; and yet we are made aware that the 
crudity, or undevelopedness, of the latter has disappeared 
under a method of artistic handling. We are not presented 
to people in whom we are interested for their own sakes. 
At the same time our attention is not centered wholly upon 
the event. I think the reason for this is the very thing that 
Professor Chandler speaks of, the using of rogues as anti- 
heroes. So that we do not have from Greene a collection 
of jests, but genuine fictitious narrative of such merit as to 
mark a step in the employment of the anti-heroic as a 
subject for artistic treatment. 

Although Greene made some advance over the jest-book 
by giving the significance of a literary form to his work, 
he did not produce anything which should be called pica¬ 
resque romance. The tales, for the most part, are complete 
in themselves, and have no bearing upon any of the tales 
before or after them. There is no conception of unity in 
Greene’s mind, no desire to paint a roguish person. Not¬ 
withstanding the fact that there is present in many of the 
tales much of the subtlety in the formulation of the trick 
and much of the adroitness in extrication from difficult places, 
there is not the breadth of view nor the extensiveness of 
interest which characterizes the genuine picaresque. The 
confession of Ned Browne is no exception. 

The tales, then, are individual units embedded in a frame- 
workfeither expository like the first two parts of conny- 

57 Entered in the Stationers’ Register December 14, 1605. Works 
■of George Peele, ed. Bullen. Vol. II. 


NASCIMUR PRO PATRIA 


111 


catching and the Defence , or fictitious biography like that 
of Ned Browne. Or the tale may have no frame-work at 
all, like those of the Thirde Part. However found, each must 
be judged as a unit on its own basis. 

There are about thirty-five of the tales scattered through¬ 
out the pamphlets. Many of them are very short, although 
a number run to the length of six or eight pages, or even a 
little more. Some are genuinely amusing, and some are 
very clever. One or two not in themselves humorous at all 
are told with such forced gusto that it is the artificial gaiety 
we smile at rather than the narratives. Some of them are 
slight, and more than one needs Greene’s parting “Let each 
take heede of dealing with any such kinde of people,” or 
his “Let this give them warning to beware of any such 
unprofitable guests” to apologize for its lack of weight and 
to justify its inclusion in the series. The truth is, that 
Greene is sometimes compelled to do his manufacturing out 
of scant material. 

Many of the tales are good reading. The brevity of them 
necessitates directness and clearness. They are unified in 
idea and in treatment, for they are by their nature limited 
to the telling of one event. In style they are simple. For¬ 
tunately Greene conceived the proper language in which to 
write of such base subjects to be itself “base” and devoid 
of refinement. Of the thirty-five stories as a group, the 
impression one gets is that Greene has accomplished satis¬ 
factorily the end he had in mind, “ Let this suffice, and now 
I will recreate your wits with a merry Tale or two.” 

Here is one of them: 

“How a canning knave got a Truncke well stuffed with linnen and cer- 
taine parcells of plate out of a Citizens house , and how the Master of the 
house holpe the deceiver to carry away his oume goods. 

Within the Cittie of London dwelleth a worthy man who 
hath very great dealing in his trade, and his shop very well 


112 


ROBERT GREENE 


frequented with Customers: had such a shrewd mischaunce 
of late by a Conny catcher, as may well serve for an example 
to others leste they have the like. A cunning villaine, that 
had long time haunted this Cittizens house, and gotten many 
a cheat which he carried awaye safely: made it his custome 
when he wanted money to helpe him selfe ever where he 
had sped so often: divers thinges he had which were never 
mist, especially such as appertained to the Citizens trade, 
but when anye were found wanting they could not devise 
which way they were gone, so pollitiquely this fellow alwayes 
behaved him selfe: well knew he what times of greatest 
business this Cittizen had in his trade, and when the shop 
is most stored with Chapmen: then would he step up the 
staires (for there was and is another door to the house 
besides that which entreth into the shop) and what was next 
hand came ever away with. One time above the rest in an 
evening about Candlemas, when daylight shuts in about 
six of the clock, he watched to do some feate in the house, 
and seeing the mistresse goe foorth with her maid, the good- 
man and his folkes very busie in the shop: up the staires 
he goes as he was wonte to doo, and lifting up the latch of 
the hall portall doore, saw nobody neere to trouble him: 
when stepping into the next chamber, where the Citizen 
and his wife usually lay, at the beds feete there stood a 
hansome truncke, wherein was very good linnen, a faire guilt 
salte, two silver french bowles for wine, two silver drinking 
pots, a stone Jugge covered with silver, and a dosen of silver 
spoons. This truncke he brings to the staires head, and 
making fast the doore againe, drawes it downe the steppes so 
softlye as he could, for it was so bigge and heavy, as he could 
not easily carry it: having it out at the doore, unseene of 
any neighbour or anybody else, he stood strugling with it to 
lift it up on the stall, which by reason of the weight trobled 
him very much. The goodman comming foorth of his shop, 


NASCIMUR PRO PATRIA 


113 


to bid a customer or two far well made the fellowe afraide 
he should now be taken for all togither: but calling his 
wittes together to escape if he could, he stood gazing up at 
the signe belonging to the house, as though he were desirous 
to knowe what sign it was: which the Cittizen perceiving, 
came to him and asked him what he sought for? I looke for 
the sign of the blew bell sir, quoth the fellowe, where a 
gentleman having taken a chamber for this tearme time, 
hath sent me hether with this his Troncke of apparell: 
quoth the Citizen, I know no such sign in this streete, but in 
the next (naming it) there is such a one indeede, and there 
dwelleth one that letteth foorthe chambers to gentlemen. 
Truely sir quoth the fellowe, thats the house I should go 
to, I pray you sir lend me your hand but to helpe the Trunke 
on my back, for I thinking to ease me a while upon your 
stall, set it shorte, and now I can hardly get it up againe. 
The Citizen not knowing his owne Trunke, but indeede 
never thinking on any such notable deceite: helpes him up 
with the Truncke, and so sends him away roundly with his 
owne goods. When the Truncke was mist, I leave to your 
conceits what householde greefe there was on all sides, espe- 
ciallye the goodman himselfe, who remembering how hee 
helpt the fellow with a Truncke, perceived that heereby 
hee had beguyled himselfe, and loste more then in haste 
hee should recover againe. How this may admonish others, 
I leave to the judgement of the indifferent opinion, that see 
when honest meaning is craftilye beleagerd, as good fore¬ 
sight must be used to prevent such daungers.” 

The story is typical for it illustrates the characteristics 
I have enumerated above. It is short, it is clever, it is 
simple, and, moreover, it is interesting. I believe that its 
effectiveness is the result of a conscious effort. Greene wrote 
these tales with a long experience back of him. Starting out 
as the ape of Euphues when a boy of twenty, to enter the 


114 


ROBERT GREENE 


perilous career of a man of letters in Elizabethan London, 
a man of his versatility and quickness would naturally de¬ 
velop independence and consciousness of method. This 
tale which I have printed in full shows such consciousness. 
There is careful but rapid sketching of the setting and of 
the conditions which make possible the event about to be 
related. There is just enough character drawing to show 
us the unsuspecting citizen and the cunning thief, and to get 
us ready for their respective actions when the unexpected 
moment of meeting arrives. There is concreteness of de¬ 
tail — the contents of the trunk are given, which make it 
so desirable a prize. The dialogue is good. There is sus¬ 
pense, — What will the thief do when he finds himself dis¬ 
covered? There is admirable climax when Mr. Goodman 
helps the conny-catcher on with his trunk. In its way, the 
piece is excellent. And it contains less than seven hundred 
words. 

An understanding of this narrative importance of the 
social pamphlets of the first group associates Greene at 
once with the writer of fiction as we have seen him in con¬ 
nection with his novels. What we said of him there applies 
even more strongly here. Greene is at his best when he is 
concerned with the development of events, and when he is 
not encumbered with the task of presenting character. In 
the illustrative tales of the conny-catching pamphlets all the 
conditions for success for a man like Greene are inherent 
in the nature of the material. A rogue is pretty much a 
rogue anywhere. It is not his character as an individual 
that we are interested in; it is what his character leads him, 
and enables him, to do. So that Greene is left, in the writ¬ 
ing of these tales, to follow out his own natural inclination 
in presenting action and clever situation rather than person¬ 
ality. His results are often worthy of high praise. 

The pamphlets of Greene’s first group are superficial as 


NASCIMUR PRO PATRIA 


115 


exposures of deceits, and light in their aim. Their greatest 
merit is not in their sociological value, but rather in their 
qualities to afford entertainment. The two pamphlets of the 
second group 58 are differentiated from those of the first by 
their keener insight into certain social forces and by their 
greater understanding of Elizabethan society, one of them 
manifesting an intelligence of the element of sex as an 
active power toward crime, the other furnishing a knowl¬ 
edge of social estates at once extensive and deep. 

These two pamphlets were not, it is probable, thus differ¬ 
entiated in Greene’s own mind. Professor Collins, speaking 
of the significance of one of them, noted that significance as 
“being the more effective, as it is obviously neither intended 
nor perceived by the writer.” 59 I believe that what Pro¬ 
fessor Collins said is true. Greene apparently did not 
regard these two pamphlets as unlike the Notable Dis¬ 
covery or The Blacke Bookes Messenger , and apparently he 
did not publish them for any different purpose. The 
u Reade, laugh, and learne” on the title-page of the Dispu¬ 
tation would indicate as much. But although Greene was not 
aiming at the production of anything different and was not, 
it may be, aware of the greater significance of the two pam¬ 
phlets, the difference does exist, as I shall try to make clear. 

Of the two, the Disputation is the nearer to the pamphlets 
of the first group. We can, therefore, take it up first. 

58 A DISPUTATION Betweene a Hee Conny-catcher, and a Shee 
Conny-catcher, whether a Theefe or a Whoore, is most hurtfull in 
Cousonage, to the Common-wealth. DISCOVERING THE SECRET 
VILLAnies of alluring Strumpets. With the Conversion of an 
English Courtizen, reformed this present yeare. 1592. Reade, laugh, 
and learne. Nascimur pro patria. 

A QUIP FOR AN UPstart Courtier: Or, a quaint dispute 
between Veluet breeches and Cloth-breeches. Wherein is plainely 
set downe the disorders in all Estates and Trades. 

69 Collins’ Edition of Greene. General Introduction. Vol. I., p. 31. 


116 


ROBERT GREENE 


This work is in two parts of about equal length, some 
forty pages each. The first part, from which the pamphlet 
derives its name, consists essentially of a dialogue between 
a thief and a courtezan, who happen to meet, and who, 
after they have conversed a few minutes on the street, go 
to a tavern, take a room, and order supper. While the 
meal is preparing, they debate their respective abilities at 
cozenage. 60 Nan wins, and Lawrence pays for the supper. 
The dialogue is interspersed with four or five tales. 

There are similarities to the other pamphlets which tend 
to identify the Disputation with them. For the Disputation 
is full of references to Greene himself, advertisements of 
the Blacke Booke soon to appear, and of the Conny-catching 
pamphlets already published. There are the same boasts 
of patriotism and of bravery despite the threats which have 
come; there is a stirring account of how, while he was at 
supper one night in St. John’s Head within Ludgate in the 
company of a certain gentleman, some “fourteene or fif- 
teene of them met, and thought to have made that the 
fatal night of my overthrowe”; but the citizens came to his 
aid and he escaped, though the gentleman who was with 
him was sore hurt. There is the same pride in the effect¬ 
iveness of the exposures, “I cannot deny but they beginne 
to waste away about London. ... I will plague them to 
the extreamitie: let them doe what they dare with their 
bilbowe blades, I feare them not.” 61 Throughout the first 
half of the pamphlet there is, in short, such stir and noise 

60 Professor Collins was mistaken in thinking that this “dialogue 
is carried on in bed.” Vol. I., p. 31. He mis-read Nan’s remark 
“Lye a little further & give mee some roome,” (Vol. X., p. 205) and 
did not perceive that Nan was only rebuking Lawrence. “What 
Lawrence,” she went on, “your toong is too lavish.” Nan’s proposal 
“Let us to the Taverne,” occurs within five lines of the remark which 
led Professor Collins astray. 

61 Vol. X., p. 236. 


NASCIMUR PRO PATRIA 


117 


and clatter, such raising of the dust, no wonder we are 
deafened and blinded. With all this palaver about us, no 
wonder we lose ourselves and take Greene for what he is 
striving his utmost to impress upon us that he is. But 
in such respects as these Greene is still the quack. 

In other respects, however, the Disputation is different 
from the pamphlets I have just associated it with. It is 
more vital. In the first place, it is genuinely humorous. 
The whole affair of these conny-catchers is humorous, to 
be sure, if regarded from the point of view I have tried to 
set forth. We cannot but laugh at Greene for the face he 
puts on. And there are humorous passages in some of the 
pamphlets, too. But the humor of the Disputation is all 
its own. It is not the humor evoked by the confession of 
Ned Browne, the laughter aroused from hearing the speech 
of a wooden doll, even though the wooden doll be put to 
death at the end with a string about its neck. It is not the 
knowing smile in which Greene indulges over some of the 
more simple tales which he thinks funny; it is not the keen 
appreciative delight over a cleverly turned trick; nor the 
sympathy we bestow upon the rascal when we know well 
enough that we should be sad for the victim. And it is 
not the flippant, saucy humor of the oft-repeated, ‘‘Was 
not this a pretty conny-catching, Maister R. G.?” The 
humor of the Disputation is none of these. It is deeper; 
grim, but not cynical. It comes partly from the situation, 
and partly from Greene’s method of treatment. It is uncon¬ 
scious, unaffected. Nan and Lawrence talk naturally, never 
thinking for a moment that they are being overheard. Our 
enjoyment of their conversation is that of an eavesdropper. 
We have no business to be there, but we have not the will 
to go away. Nan and Lawrence have been so complaisant 
in their views of life, in the shrewdness of their wits, that 
we delight to see them wriggle under the sting of their 


118 


ROBERT GREENE 


recent exposure. We rejoice in their discomfiture, and their 
bitterness. A primitive sort of humor, no doubt, to laugh 
at another’s pain, but nevertheless universal, and never¬ 
theless effective. 

In the second place, Greene somehow got a hold, in this 
little pamphlet of his, of one of the most fundamental forces 
in the whole world of wrong-doing. He reveals, by the 
dialogue between the thief and the courtezan, the power of 
sex. In villainy, Lawrence is supreme. But Nan is greater 
than he; for most of his arts are at her command. She can 
nip purses with the best. She can steal, cheat, lie. She 
can equal him at his own trade. And then she can do more. 
Her strength is threefold. Evil she can do for herself; she 
can entice her victims to her and destroy them herself; she 
can demand tribute from those who would retain her favor. 
For hers is the allurement of the strumpet. 

. . why the Lawrence what say you to me? haue I 
not prooued that in foysting and nipping we excell you, 
that there is none so great inconuenience in the Common 
wealth, as growes from whores, first for the corrupting of 
youth, infecting of age, for breeding of brawles, whereof 
ensues murther, in so much that the ruine of many men 
come from us, and the fall of many youthes of good hope, 
if they were not seduced by us, doe proclaime at Tyborne, 
that wee be the meanes of their miserie: you men theeues 
touch the bodie and wealth, but we ruine the soule, and 
indanger that which is more pretious then the worldes 
treasure: you make worke onely for the gallowes, we both 
for the gallowes and the diuel, I and for the Surgian too, 
that some hues like loathsome laizers, and die with the French 
Marbles. Whereupon I conclude that I haue wonne the 
supper. 

Laur. I confesse it Nan, for thou has tolde mee such 
wondrous villainies, as I thought neuer could haue been in 


NASCIMUR PRO PATRIA 


119 


women, I meane of your profession; why you are Croco¬ 
diles when you weepe, Basilisks when you smile, Serpents 
when you deuise, and diuels cheefest broakers to bring the 
world to destruction. And so Nan lets sit downe to our 
meate and be merry.” 

“Vivid” and “graphic” are the words which have been 
applied to this dialogue. 62 Vivid and graphic it is. But it 
does not stop there. It is true,— true, that is, in the largest 
sense. In this pamphlet we cannot quibble over details; we 
cannot inquire whether this statement or that has foundation 
in the facts of Elizabethan times, whether the picture it pre¬ 
sents is accurate or not. We cannot judge this pamphlet as 
we judged the pamphlets of the first group. Fot this one is 
based upon a universal principle of truth. Whoever Nan 
and Lawrence may be — creations of Greene’s own imagina¬ 
tion — they are a man and woman at any time and in any 
place. Be the woman a conny-catcher, she is Nan; be she 
an Egyptian queen, she is Cleopatra; be she a sorceress, 
she is Circe. And the man,— he is any man who does not 
like Ulysses bind himself to the mast. 

The second part of the pamphlet is, I think, of less social 
significance than the first. It is concerned with the story 
of an English courtezan who is converted from her life of 
sin to one of virtue. The reformation is brought about by 
a young man who, going with the beautiful courtezan into 
a very dark room, reminds her that even there God can see 
them. He pleads with her to change her life. She does 
so. Then he takes her from the house of shame and she 
becomes his wife. “Not a fiction, but a truth of one that 
yet lives,” Greene tells us, is this wonderful “life of a 
Curtszin” whose reformation took place “this present 
yeare. 1592.” 

One need not believe, in spite of Greene’s declaration, 
82 Collins. General Introduction. Vol. I., p. 32. 


120 


ROBERT GREENE 


that we have the account of a real person. Within this 
story there is a second story of similar nature, “a pleasant 
discourse, how a wife wanton by her husbands gentle warn¬ 
ing, became to be a modest Matron,” which, I have 
pointed out before, Greene took from Gascoigne’s Adventures 
of Master F. J. (1573), 63 the story of how a man won back 
his faithless wife from his faithless friend by paying her as 
a courtezan, and by his kindly manner. Whether Greene 
had some similar source for the story of the English courtezan 
is not known. The method of the young man in taking the 
woman to the darkest room in the house is somewhat similar 
to that which the wife of the usurer’s victim in the Defence 64 
used in getting the usurer into a remote room. In that room 
she confined him. In this present story the young man 
pleads with the sinful woman. The aims of the two were 
different, perhaps too much so for us to say that one story 
influenced the other. But whether a source will ever be 
discovered or not, the identity of the woman and the origin 
of her story have no relation to the significance of her con¬ 
version. That significance is dependent upon Greene’s im¬ 
aginative treatment. 

I have throughout this chapter looked upon Greene 
lightly, and I have placed little faith in his words or in his 
purposes. Even the dying words of Ned Browne, the cut- 
purse, I have regarded mostly as clap-trap. The story of 
the courtezan is apparently like that of Ned Browne, but in 
reality I believe the two are different. I cannot see that 
it is a mistake to perceive more sincerity in the prayer of the 
young man and in the woman’s turning from sin than is to be 
found in most of Greene’s work. Such passages are very few 
with him, in which we get genuine emotion and sincerity 

63 Gascoigne, Ed. W. C. Hazlitt, Vol. I., p. 473. Modern Language 
Notes. Vol. 30, No. 2, p. 61. 

6 < Vol. XI., p. 58. 


NASCIMUR PRO PATRIA 


121 


of expression. When we do come upon one which seems 
to be sound, we pause suspicious. We hesitate; we fear 
that it may turn out mere sentimentality and that our feel¬ 
ings may be trifled with. The reformation of the courtezan, 
however, appears real. I mean not that the story of it — 
the manner in which it is brought about — is affecting, but 
that the emotion which the account of it arouses is real. 
Here, for one of the rare times in Greene, one may let one¬ 
self go and not feel that one is mawkish, too easily moved, 
unperceptive. 

In the two respects that I have indicated, one in the 
recognition of an important sociological factor in crime, 
the other in the expression of a true emotion, the Disputa¬ 
tion is worthy to be separated from the larger and less pro¬ 
found group of Greene’s social pamphlets. The Quippe for an 
Upstart Courtier also has this same depth of interest. 

In the Quippe we are no longer concerned with the conny- 
catchers and the harlots. In it Greene does not deal with 
one class only, but with some sixty professions and trades, 
from the knight down to the lowest and humblest workman, 
all of which are passed in review, commented upon, and 
branded as good or bad. Greene’s method is as follows. 
One day in the Spring, he is in the fields gathering flowers. 
There are many people around. Suddenly they all dis¬ 
appear and Greene is left alone. In a few moments he sees 
coming toward him a pair of gorgeous velvet breeches: from 
the opposite direction appears a pair of plain cloth ones. 
These two, representing pride and lowliness, debate their 
right to hold the realm of Britain. They can reach no 
agreement. A jury is proposed, the selection of which fills 
the important part of the pamphlet. Finally, however, the 
twenty-four men are chosen, with the knight at their head. 
The jury debates briefly and renders its decision that cloth 
breeches is the older and rightful possessor of the land. 


122 


ROBERT GREENE 


Greene got the plan and many details, sometimes verbal 
borrowings and paraphrases, from a poem written a number 
of years before. This was The Debate between Pride and 
Lowliness by one F. T., 65 the relation between which and 
Greene’s tract was first pointed out by Mr. J. Payne Collier 
in 1841. Of this poem “the most remarkable circumstance,” 
Collier says, 66 is that Greene “stole the whole substance of 
it, and, putting it into prose, published it in 1592, in his 
own name, and as his own work.” Storojenko does well to 
object to Collier’s statement. 67 It is indeed true, as he says, 
that while the work is by no means entirely original Greene 
did much more than transform dull poetry into interesting 
prose. Greene took the plan and the purpose of the old 
debate; but he omitted and he added. He did not in any 
sense permit himself to be a slave to his original. 

The result is that Greene’s pamphlet is much better than 
the poem on which it is based. Instead of the eighty pages 
of stiff unreadable quatrains with their awkward versifica¬ 
tion and their lack of emphasis, Greene gives us sprightly 
prose which is as free from monotony as the method of the 
work would well allow. The plan, in itself, is not conducive 
to the production of enthusiasm. Sixty orders are to be 
brought into view, talked about, and gotten rid of. That 
is a tremendous task. And those sixty orders must be dis¬ 
cussed with sufficient distinctness to warrant the selection 
of twenty-four of them to serve as a jury. There are indi¬ 
cations that Greene realized the enormity of the under¬ 
taking and that he planned definitely to meet it. In the 
first place he lets the debate between velvet breeches and 

66 Formerly thought to be Francis Thynne, but shown not to be 
by Furnivall in his Preface to the Animadversions of Thynne, Chaucer 
Society, 1876, p. cxxviii. 

66 Shak. Soc. Pub. Vol. XVII. Introduction, p. v. 

67 Grosart’s Edition of Greene’s Works, Vol. I., p. 143. 


NASCIMUR PRO PATRIA 


123 


cloth breeches rise to a high pitch before he proposes the 
settlement by jury. Then he does not tell us whether the 
case is to “be tried by a verdict of twelve or four and 
twenty.” If only twelve, we think, it will not take long. 

The jury is hard to select. First comes a tailor in velvet 
and satin, pert, as dapper as a bridegroom. Greene invites 
him to be of the jury. 

“Not so,” quoth cloth breeches, “I challenge him.” 

“And why?” quoth I. 

Whereupon cloth breeches lays bare the vanity of tailors, 
their deceits and dishonesties, their catering to pride, their 
disregard for simplicity of fashion, and so on. Then the 
tailor steps aside. He will not do. 

Presently comes a broker. He is refused. Then a barber, 
a physician, an apothecary, a lawyer. All are open to some 
criticism. Finally the twelfth man is accepted, a rope- 
maker. 68 We are relieved. One man has been chosen. 
But alas! the next three are refused for their villainy. We 
give up in despair. 

Now for a stroke of luck. Three men arrive together, the 
knight, the esquire, the gentleman. They must be of the 
jury, and we have four. 

Here is the best news of all. “Ther came a troope of men 
in apparell seeming poore honest Citizens, in all they were 
eight.” They were content to serve. Nobody had serious 
objections, and so they took their places with the other 
four. We are quite as glad as Greene that “there were so 
many accepted of at once, and hoped that now quickly the 
jury would be ful.” In a moment the thirteenth man is 
chosen. 

Apparently things are going well. We shall soon be 
through. Then nine in succession are refused! 

68 This was the celebrated passage from which the Greene-Harvey- 
Nashe quarrel immediately arose. 


124 


ROBERT GREENE 


Well, the jury is finally chosen. But that is not the 
point. What I wish to emphasize is that Greene made a 
conscious effort to counteract a fundamental difficulty. If 
he was going to succeed in presenting sixty orders in a 
salable pamphlet he had to do something more than enu¬ 
merate; and what Greene accomplished was considerably 
more than enumeration. He came to the writing of the 
Quippe with a twelve years’ experience as a man who had 
made his living with a pen. He had been obliged, as never 
an Englishman before him, to learn the art of successful 
composition, and he had come to a realization of the fact 
that the manner of expression counted much. Greene 
brings before us, then, the sixty orders; but his method is 
one which has interest in itself. He manages to shift our 
attention away from the monotony of counting off trades¬ 
men to the more human and interesting task of being sorry 
for ourselves that the selection of a jury for this ridiculous 
quarrel should take so long. 

Founded though it is upon the work of another, the Quippe 
marks the highest point in the development of Greene’s 
prose style. Notwithstanding that the first part of the piece 
is not closely related to the rest of it, and that these opening 
pages are marked distinctly by the artificialities of Euphuism, 
the body of the tract is well written and thoroughly mature. 
It has the simplicity which characterizes the other social 
pamphlets; and it has also a dignity which they lack. It 
has humor — not so much as the Disputation — and clear¬ 
ness of outline. The sentences are firmly constructed, and 
contrast with the straggling ungrammatical creations of the 
earlier works. There is vigor and strength and stability. 

In addition to the qualities which arise from the style, 
the Quippe made improvement over the Debate in the trans¬ 
formation of the abstractions of personality. The butcher, 
the baker, the bellows-mender, the goldsmith, the cook,— 



NASCIMTJR PRO PATRIA 


125 


all these, as types, belong of course to the genre of character¬ 
writing. Greene’s (rather F. T.’s) idea of presenting them 
is, therefore, by no means new. And Greene’s attitude 
toward these personages is not unique either, for they are in 
his work still representatives of a type. This is necessarily 
so; else they would have no place in a work of this kind — 
any more than the Knight or the Lady Prioress would 
have in the company of the immortal pilgrims if they did 
not personify definite social classes. But types as they are, 
Greene has made over the bloodless and boneless unrealities 
of the poem, and has given them a degree of reality. They 
are not abstract types, but semi-living types, if it be not a 
paradox to say so. They are the product, not of an exposi¬ 
tory, but of a dramatic mood. It cannot be maintained that 
Greene has secured total freedom from the method of his 
predecessor. But he has done much. He has secured for 
the types of which he writes the attention which we pay to 
personality rather than to a discussion of estates and con¬ 
ditions of life. 

It is entirely in accord with Greene’s nature that he should 
not have succeeded in endowing the people in the Quippe 
with complete individuality. Had he been Chaucer he could 
have done so. But Greene was not, as we saw in his fic¬ 
tion, able to progress to a sharp presentation of character. 
His talent lay in the direction of the ordering of events. 
The Quippe is another illustration of this fact. I endeav¬ 
ored to show how Greene made definite provision for his 
reader’s interest in his narrative. But he did not, and 
could not, make the same provision in the way of character. 
So far as the Quippe is story, therefore, it is successful. So 
far as it is presentation of character, it is not wholly so. 

Defective in the element of characterization the Quippe 
is, despite the vast amount of improvement which Greene 
made. But after all, I do not believe that the greatest 


126 


ROBERT GREENE 


importance of the pamphlet attaches to its quality either 
as narrative or as study of character. The real significance 
I take to be the firmness of its grasp upon an understanding 
of social values. 

In turning from the underworld of London Greene was 
broadening his view of society. He was dealing not with 
the problems of a particular time and place, but rather 
with the universal struggle between haughtiness on the one 
hand which leads to tyranny, and lowliness on the other 
which leads to the development of a substantial common¬ 
wealth and the establishment of democratic ideals. 

Satires of the estates compose an established literary 
tradition. Greene is carrying on this tradition of the 
satire, of course. Perhaps he meant only satire, an expo¬ 
sure, in this quaint dispute and in the judgment of the 
classes of society who are to make up the jury, of the traits 
of good and bad, of uplifting and degenerating, which con¬ 
stitute everywhere the society of men. There is no way of 
knowing whether Greene meant anything else than just that. 


CHAPTER V 


THE POETRY 

I 

If we exclude the lost ballad, of which we know nothing 
but the title, 1 Greene’s career as a poet extends over nine 
years, from the time of the Second Part of Mamillia in 1583 
down until his death. In this period of time Greene ran 
the number of his poems up to almost ninety. His poems, 
with few exceptions, are lyrics; and all but one are found 
embedded, either incidentally or integrally, in the romances 
upon which he was engaged. 

Greene was not unique, of course, in his mingling of prose 
and poetry. There were plenty of examples in the work 
of the Italian writers, notably of Sannazaro. His immediate 
predecessors in the field of English prose fiction — Painter, 
Fenton, Gascoigne, for instance — had employed the method. 
And Greene’s own contemporaries were doing the same thing, 
men like Riche and Lodge, and above all, Sir Philip Sidney. 

For the most part, Greene’s poems, like those of the 
other writers, bear little relation to the romances in which 
they occur. They are inserted, often on the flimsiest pos¬ 
sible excuse, to afford their author a means of publication 
for what are not infrequently experimental effusions, and 

1 Edward White: Vicesimo die Marcii (1581) Lycenced unto him 
under th(e) (h)andes of the Bishop of London and the wardens, A 
Ballad Intituled, youthe seinge all his wais so Troublesome abandon- 
inge vertue and learninge to vyce, Recalleth his former follies with 
an inwarde Repentaunce By Greene. Stationers’ Register, Arber Vol. 
II., p. 391. 


127 


128 


ROBERT GREENE 


what are in any event only poetical by-products which would 
otherwise have had no chance of circulation. 

Sometimes a passage is put into poetry, and so introduced, 
which might just as well, as prose, have formed a part of the 
romance, or have been omitted altogether. How far this 
habit is carried can be seen in the Description of Maesia. 2 
“She was passing fair,” says Greene, “for this I remember 
was her description.” And the poem of eighteen lines which 
follows is not merely incidental, but obviously dragged in. 
Certain poems are, however, by Greene’s own statement, 
meant to be incidental. One of the best-known poems, his 
Sonetto in Menaphon, What thing is Love? 3 is so intro¬ 
duced:—“Since we have talkte of Love so long, you shall 
give me leave to shewe my opinion of that foolish fancie 
thus.” More frequently, though, than for any other reason, 
the poems, be they of ever so little importance to the develop¬ 
ment of the story, are put forward on the pretext that they 
are expressions of mental states of various characters. And 
so we have Doralicia, who “to rid hir selfe therefore from 
these dumpes, took hir Lute, whereupon she played thys 
dittie”; 4 Barmenissa, who “was overcharged with melan¬ 
choly: to avoyde the which . . . she warbled out this 
Madrygale”; 5 Isabel, who “cald for pen and inck and 
wrote this mournfull Sonnet”; 6 and many another dis¬ 
tressed heroine or repentant hero. 

In many cases, to be sure, there does exist a definite, and 
often a necessary, connection between the poem and the 
novel. Occasion for Arion’s discourse upon the nature of 

2 Farewell to Follie, Vol. IX., p. 266. 

3 Vol. VI., p. 140. Mr. Crawford (Notes and Queries. Ser. 10. 
No. 9. May 2, 1908) points out that Allot in England's Parnassus 
wrongly ascribes this poem to the Earl of Oxford. 

4 Arbasto, Vol. III., p. 248. 

5 Penelopes Web, Vol. V., p. 179. 

6 Never too Late, Vol. VIII., p. 157. 


THE POETRY 


129 


women was given by the song of Arion. 7 Eurimachus’ 
Madrigal was overheard by the mistress, who stepped to 
the lover and “drave him . . . abruptly from his pas¬ 
sions.” 8 Under the story of the fly which would perch 
beside the eagle, Menaphon pleaded his love. 9 Melicertus 
fell in love with Samela after he heard Doron’s song in 
description of her. 10 Mullidor sent his Madrigal to his 
lady, in a letter. 11 And lastly, Infida and Lamilia sang 
their courtezan’s songs, deliberately to allure and retain 
their victims. 12 

There are numerous other poems which have this same 
relation to plot development. For all these the modern reader 
feels the justification. But on the whole, the impression of 
Greene’s poetry, so far as its place in his romances is con¬ 
cerned, is that it has no particular reason for existence. 
The question of its intrinsic value is another matter. 
Whether or not it has merit, it must be considered on its 
own basis and not on that of its pretended relationship. 

II 

The themes of Greene’s poems connect him with more 
than one poetic movement. He was in several ways the 
descendant of the poets who had preceded him during the 
last thirty years, for few indeed are the subjects employed 
by them which do not find a place in his work. At the same 
time, he was strongly affected by the newer influences which 
kept coming in from Italy and France, and which did much 
to change the character of English poetry during this period. 
As a result, Greene is, in this division of his work, as in 

7 Orpharion, Vol XII., p. 65. 8 Alcida , Vol. IX., p. 99. 

9 Menaphon , Vol. VI., p. 59. 10 lb., p. 65. 

11 Francescos Fortunes , Vol. VIII., p. 217. 

12 Never too Late , Vol. VIII., p. 75. 

Groatsworth of Wit, Vol. XII., p. 113. 



130 


ROBERT GREENE 


everything else that he did, a fairly accurate mirror of the 
literary activity of the age. 

Like the other Elizabethan lyrists, Greene sang mostly 
of love. Love is his prevailing theme, and he treats it in 
various ways. “What thing is Love?” he asks. It is a 
power divine, a discord, a desire, a peace. 13 Love has no 
law. 14 Life without love is lost, just as sheep die without 
their food. 15 Greene praises chastity 16 and constancy 17 in 
love, and he writes of lightness 18 and jealousy 19 in affection. 
Six poems preach definitely the warning to beware of love. 
Three have their basis in the Eros motiv. After the manner 
of Petrarchists, Greene deals with the pangs of the lover. 
At least six of his poems are on this theme. But there is 
in none of them that exquisite restlessness and analytic 
subtlety shown by Wyatt and the other poets of the early 
Miscellanies, and by the Sonneteers. 

Greene, besides reflecting the interest of his time in the 
poetry of love, reflects also its interest in the pastoral devel¬ 
opment which had been strengthening for some time, and 
which, given decided impetus by the Shepherd’s Calendar, 
first gained real importance in the decade following upon 
1580 . 

This element of pastoralism Greene uses in several ways: 
whether for adornment as when Menaphon sang 

“When ewes brought home with evening Sunne 
Wend to their foldes. 
and to their holdes, 

The shepheards trudge when light of daye is done,” 20 

13 Menaphon , Vol. VI., p. 140. 14 76., p. 87. 

15 Never too Late, Vol. VIII., p. 50. 

16 Philomela, Vol. XI., pp. 123, 178. 

17 76., p. 149; also Alcida, Vol. IX., p. 87. 

18 Alcida, Vol. IX., p. 87. Orpharion, Vol. XII., p. 21. 

19 Ciceronis Amor , Vol. VII., p. 123. 

20 Menaphon , Vol. VI., p. 59. 


THE POETRY 


131 


in introduction to his plea for love; or whether as a medium 
by which to extol love’s sweetness, 

“If countrie loves such sweet desires do gaine, 

What Lady would not love a Shepheard Swaine? ” 21 

Pastoralism in Greene’s poetry, however, found its chief 
expression in the seven poems which recount the stories of 
shepherds’ loves. In the case of Doron’s Jigge, 22 the poem, 
to be sure, is mostly jingle, with only a few lines of narra¬ 
tive to make a slight story. Again when Doron and Car- 
mela join in an eclogue, 23 the story is of slight importance. 
The interest in this dialogue poem centers rather upon the 
rustic characters themselves and upon their speech, an 
interest which is not in any degree changed, whether we 
consider the poem as a serious attempt on Greene’s part 
to imitate country talk or as fun-poking at country manners. 

“When Phillis kept sheepe along the westerne plaines,” 
however, “and Coridon did feed his flocks hard by,” 24 we 
have as a result a poem in which the love-story is of some 
value. There is the conventional, but ever charming, 
beauty of the shepherdess which sets the shepherd’s heart 
on fire. There is Coridon’s leaving of his flocks to begin 
the wooing, his ineptitude in speech, and his declaration of 
love. There is Phyllis’ coyness, and questioning, and eva¬ 
sion, and final consent. And so “this love begun and ended 
both in one.” In the Shepheards Ode, 25 too, we have re¬ 
counted the love of this same youthful couple, or of another 
youthful couple with the same delightfully pastoral names. 

These are the stories of happy loves. The maiden is 
kind, and all ends well. But the event is not always 

21 Mourning Garment , Vol. IX., p. 143a. 

22 Menaphon , Vol. VI., p. 69. 

23 76., p. 137. 

24 Perimedes, Vol. VII., p. 91. 

26 Ciceronis Amor, Vol. VII., p. 180. 


132 


ROBERT GREENE 


thus. 26 Poor Tytirus “did sigh and see” . . . “where 
Galate his lover goes,”— Galate with the green chaplet on 
her head and the beautiful face, as fair as a maid's could be. 
But she said him nay and was off with a smile. And so 
was Tytirus turned to scorn the smiles and faces of woman¬ 
kind, and to, 

“say to love, and women both, 

What I liked, now I do loath." 

Old Menalcus went even farther than disdain. He had 
loved, but all in vain. And so he had learned to repent, 
and, from his unhappy outcome, to stand as a warning to 
youth that it should beware of love. 27 One more pastoral 
theme Greene uses in this group of poems. I refer to the 
unhappy love of Rosamund and Alexis, to Rosamund's 
grief, lamentation, and death,— the sad result of abandon¬ 
ment by the faithless shepherd Alexis. 28 

Greene has another pastoral poem, The Description of the 
Shepherd and his Wife, which may serve as a transition 
to the next group which we take up. This poem 29 is pas¬ 
toral only in the sense that it deals with conventional 
country people. It does in reality belong to another type 
of poetry which Greene was fond of writing,— namely, 
descriptions of persons. He describes both men and 
women, not because an idea of their appearance is neces¬ 
sary in any connection, but merely because he delights to 
compose such descriptions for their own sake. 

Aside from this description of the shepherd, there are 
six poems which are pure descriptions of men. The most 
noticeable group is that found in Greene's Vision , in which 
we have three poems obviously planned together. These 

26 Mourning Garment, Vol. IX., p. 201. 

27 Never too Late, Vol. VIII., p. 17. 

28 Mourning Garment, Vol. IX., p. 159. 

29 lb., p. 141. 


THE POETRY 


133 


are the descriptions of Chaucer, Gower, arid Solomon, 30 
very elaborate, with some attempt at characterization, but 
with more attention to outward detail of bodily appearance 
and garments. Another rather interesting poem on this 
theme is Infida’s Song in Never too Late. zl Here we have 
a poem, written as a description of a man, which, except 
that it is sung by a courtezan to entice her lover, and that 
it contains what might easily be said to be adaptations to 
the sex of the singer, cannot in any way be distinguished 
from the conventional descriptions of women. There are 
the same cherry cheeks, vermilion lips, silver-white neck, 
and flaming eyes which fill the fond one’s thoughts with 
“sweet desires”; there is the same appeal for mercy that 
may be found in any other Elizabethan song of the kind 
sung by a man. Indeed, we wonder whether there was 
any clear-cut difference as to how the descriptions should 
read, and whether all such descriptive poems were not 
made purely in accordance with a convention which would 
fit either men or women. We have at least seen such to 
be the case in Infida’s Song. And besides, Solomon and 
the Palmer 32 both had amber locks — as what Elizabethan 
beauty, save an occasional dark-haired maiden, had not? 

Whether all poets so conventionalized their ideas of hand¬ 
some men we do not have any adequate way of knowing. 
For outside of Marlowe’s celebrated description of Leander, 
these descriptions of men are rare in the poetry of the age. 
We have observed frequently that Greene is both a mirror 
and an experimenter. Perhaps in these descriptions he is 
showing us his experimental side. 

In his descriptions of women, however, Greene was by 
no means unique. Such poems were common enough in 

so Vol. XII., pp. 209, 210, 275. 

Vol. VIII., p. 75. 

32 Never too Late , Vol. VIII., p. 13. 


134 


ROBERT GREENE 


Elizabethan poetry, as they are in all poetry. There were 
beginnings of them even in TotteVs Miscellany. Wyatt has 
a reference to “tresses of gold .” 33 Surrey speaks of his 
mistress’ “golden tresses” and “smilyng lokes .” 34 Grim- 
ald 35 mentions his lady’s eyes, head, foot, etc., even though 
he does not describe them. But in the poems of the uncer¬ 
tain authors we find examples of elaborate description . 36 We 
find them also in Turberville 37 —yellow hair, eyes like stars 
or sapphires, little mouth, coral lips, teeth white as whale¬ 
bone, body blameless, arms rightly proportioned, and hands 
well-shaped. And so on in the works of many of the mis¬ 
cellaneous lyrists . 38 Thomas Watson has the same sort of 
description in his Passionate Century of Love. Watson’s lady, 
too, is of the golden-haired, blue-eyed, fair-skinned type, 
whose cheeks are of lilies and roses . 39 As Professor Erskine 
remarks, “the important thing about it (this method of 
description) is that the picture immediately became con¬ 
ventionalized with the Elizabethan poets, and it is the ideal 
of beauty for the whole period .” 40 

Slavishly, almost, Greene conforms to this ideal in his 

33 Arber’s Reprint , p. 68. 34 lb., p. 12. 

35 lb., p. 98. 36 lb., p. 214; p. 270. 

37 Ed. Chambers, Vol. II., p. 644; p. 648. 

38 “If I should undertake to wryte in prayse of a gentlewoman, I 
would neither prayse her chrystal eye, nor her cherrie lippe, . . . 
For these things are trita and obvia.” Gascoigne. Notes of Instruction , 
1575. Gregory Smith, Elizabethan Critical Essays. 1904. Vol. I., p. 48. 

39 Hecatompathia. Spenser Society, 1869, p. 21, “This passion of 
love is lively expressed by the Authour, in that he lavishlie praiseth 
the person and beautifull ornaments of his love, one after another as 
they lie in order. He partly imitateth here in Aeneas Silvius , who 
setteth downe the like in describing Lucretia the love of Euryalus; 
and partly he folioweth Ariosto Canto 7, where he describeth Alcina; 
and partly borroweth from some others where they describe the 
famous Helen of Greece” 

40 The Elizabethan Lyric. 1905. p. 91. 


THE POETRY 


135 


poems . 41 His women look just alike, created, as they are, 
all of them thoroughly in accordance with the accepted 
model. But on this set convention, Greene rings all possible 
changes, with variations in simile and mythological adorn¬ 
ment. Now my lady’s lips are ruby red, now roses over¬ 
washed with dew; her cheeks are lilies steeped in wine, or 
strewn with roses red and white; or 

“Lilly cheekes whereon beside 
Buds of Roses shew their pride.” 42 

Her stature is like tall cedar trees , 43 her pace like princely 
Juno’s, she is fairer than Diana, or Thetis, or Venus. And 
so on, ad infinitum , in the fifteen or twenty poems on this 
theme . 44 But her locks are always golden, and her eyes are 
always as sapphires or as twinkling stars. There are in 
Greene’s work none of those somewhat rare exceptions to 
this blonde ideal, exceptions which eulogize dark-complexioned 
women, such as Sidney praises in Astrophel and Stella , 45 and 
such as reach their best-known delineation in the “dark 

41 There is a passage in his prose works which indicates very clearly 
how fully Greene recognized this type of beauty as wholly conventional. 
Young men, he says, “worke their own woe, penning downe ditties, 
songs, sonnets, madrigals, and such like, shadowed over with the 
pensell of flatterie, where from the fictions of poets they fetche the 
type and figure of their fayned affection: first, decyphering hir beauty 
to bee more than superlative, comparing hir face unto Venus, hir 
haire unto golde, hir eyes unto starres,” etc. Vol. IX., p. 292. 

42 Vol. VIII., p. 62. 

43 Vol. III., p. 123. Greene had a habit of repeating himself. This 
description of Silvestro’s Lady is used again, with some variations 
and omissions, as the description of Maesia in Farewell to Follie , Vol. 
IX., p. 266. 

44 An interesting example of this variation of description is to be 
found in the singing match (the only real example of this type of 
poetry in Greene) between Menaphon and Melicertus, both singers 
aiming to set forth the beauties of the same woman. 

46 Sonnet No. 7. 


136 


ROBERT GREENE 


lady” of the Shakespeare Sonnets ,— exceptions which Sir 
Sidney Lee maintains 46 are distinctively the reflection of 
French influence from men like Amadis Jamyn. 

These poems in praise of women’s charms, which connect 
Greene with the newer movements in English poetry, lead 
easily to another of his themes, which connects him definitely 
with the older school in a tradition which extends back into 
the Middle Ages. Greene’s first extant poem belongs to this 
class — the satires on women. His interest in this theme, 
however, seems to have been slight. He has only four 
poems on it: one attacking particularly women’s following 
of fashion, and their desire for fine clothes; 47 one on the 
curse of women’s beauty; 48 one on their pride in their 
beauty; 49 and the last one on the censure of their “blab¬ 
bing.” 50 As a variation to the satires on women, there are 
a couple of poems against courtezans. 51 

Another interest which connects Greene with the past is 
his group of poems on gnomic themes. The gnomic poems 
belong to the latter half of his career, none being earlier 
than 1587. After this date, he wrote on various subjects, 
jealousy, the shortness of life, the triumph of truth, ambition, 
discontent, gluttony, wit, and fortune. We have seen how 
strongly Greene was dominated in his romances by the idea of 
Fortune, and so we are surprised to find only two poems on this 
theme — both of them on the despising of Fortune’s power. 

Fortune’s anger was thought to strike most violently in 
lofty places. The lowly life was therefore considered safest; 
and he who was contented with his humble lot thus held 
the power of Fortune in despite. This theme of contentment 
was common enough among the Elizabethan poets. Greene 

48 The French Renaissance in England. 1910. p. 273. 

47 Vol. II., p. 249. « Vol. IX., p. 24. 

49 Vol. IX., p. 25. so Ibmj p 88 

61 Vol. X., p. 200. Vol. XII, p. 129. 


THE POETRY 137 

wrote three poems on it, 52 among them his perhaps most 
celebrated song, 

“ Sweet are the thoughts that savour of content, 

The quiet mind is better than a crowne.” 

We pass now to another group of poems,—the Anac¬ 
reontics. In 1554 there was published in France, by Henri 
Estienne, an edition of the poems of Anacreon, or rather 
of the poems thought to be his. This edition had great 
influence upon the poets of the Pleiade. It was almost 
immediately translated in full by Remy Belleau, and was to 
be seen thenceforth in many forms — translations, adapta¬ 
tions, imitations — by various of Belleau’s colleagues. The 
Anacreontic vein, and to some extent, that of the Greek 
Anthology with which they were already familiar, the 
French poets shortly assimilated. And through the work 
of these men (and possibly through the original tongue as 
well) the Anacreontic poems became influential in England. 
We find Greene a sharer in this movement, nowhere more 
clearly than in a direct translation from the Pseudo- 
Anacreon itself. This is the celebrated Number Thirty 
One, which he translates as “ Cupid abroade was lated in 
the night.” This poem was one evidently which appealed 
to him, for he used it, with very slight changes, in two 
different novels. 53 Needless to say, after the manner of 
other Elizabethan poets, he nowhere indicates either the 
source of the poem itself or the fact that he is reproducing 
his own translation. 54 

62 Vol. V., p. 179; Vol. VIII., p. 29; Vol. IX., p. 279. 

63 Alcida, Vol. IX., p. 99; Orpharion, Vol. XII., p. 73. 

64 Greene’s translation is printed also in Davison’s Poetical Rhapsody 
(Ed. Bullen, 1891. Vol. II., p. 86) where there are translations of three 
of Anacreon’s Odes by A. W. Two of these three are translated “other¬ 
wise,” the second by Thomas Spelman (or Spilman) and the third by 
Greene. 


138 


ROBERT GREENE 


Of the other poems of the group, it cannot be said whether 
they are original with Greene or not. Perhaps he is again 
trying his hand at experimentation; at least no originals, 
either Greek or French, are known. Whether original or 
copied, some of these poems are in Greene’s lightest style, 
and mark him clearly as distinct from the older poets of 
the Miscellanies. Mars in a rage at Venus moves against 
her in arms. 55 Cupid is afraid for his mother’s life. She 
bids him be not afraid. Trimming her hair, making herself 
beautiful, carrying a fan of silver feathers, she goes in a 
coach of ebony past the place where Mars is standing. She 
frowns. In fear Mars throws his armor down and vows 
repentance. Venus becomes gracious. Thus can woman’s 
looks subdue the greatest god in arms. All this in twenty- 
four lines of a degree of polish unknown before the time of 
Greene, and known only to a few of his contemporaries, 
such as Lyly, Peele, or Spenser. 

In another song of Greene’s we have the same delicacy of 
execution, but the delicacy is mingled with a suggestive 
sensualness which somewhat mars the poem, 

“. . . then though I wanton it awry, 

And play the wag: from Adon this I get, 

I am but young and may be wanton yet.” 56 

One other only of these poems need be spoken of, the song 
in Ciceronis Amorf 1 “Fond faining Poets make of Love a 
god,” worth notice as reflecting the then prevalent poetizing 
about the nature of Cupid and the extent of his power. 
Greene says he is no god, as many foolish poets think, and 
proves him “but a boy not past the rod.” 58 

55 Vol. VII., p. 133. 66 Vol. VII., p. 88. 57 Vol. VII., p. 136. 

58 A similar conception is to be found in Thomas Watson’s Tears 
of Fancie, 1593. Sonnet I. “I helde him (Cupid) as a boy not past 
the rod” 

Another playful disbelief in the divinity of Cupid is expressed by 


THE POETRY 


139 


There is one group of poems left, a rather large group 
of repentance poems. Dyce, and Grosart especially, have 
emphasized the repentant note in Greene’s work as a char¬ 
acteristic of him, and have attempted to establish a canon 
thereby by which to judge certain works, the authorship 
of which has been discussed in connection with Greene’s 
name. It is natural, perhaps, in view of the prodigal-son 
romances, to emphasize this side of Greene’s activity. But 
it may be seriously doubted whether there is more than a 
reflection of the general tendency toward this sort of poetic 
theme, and whether Greene is not merely doing the thing 
which had begun long before his time, and which con¬ 
tinued long after. At least many examples of repentant 
poems can be found among the poets of the age, some 
of which show a degree of real religious feeling, but more 
of which reveal, as Greene’s most often do, only the con¬ 
ventional repentant ideas, sorrow for the sins of youth, and 
so forth. 

The one of Greene’s poems which really contains what 
has been called the “characteristic” repentant note of 
which Grosart spoke so often is the group of verses in the 
Groatsworth of Wit , 

“Deceyving world that with alluring toys, 

Hast made my life the subject of thy scorne, 


O that a yeere were graunted me to live, 

And for that yeare my former wit restorde, 

What rules of life, what counsell would I give? 

How should my sinne with sorrow be deplorde? 

But I must die of every man abhorde, 

Time loosely spent will not againe be woone, 

My time is loosely spent, and I undone.” 59 

Thomas Howell in his Devises , 1581 (Ed. Raleigh, 1906, p. 69). 
Howell says that Cupid is no god at all, but — a devil. 

& 9 Vol. XII., p. 137. 




140 


ROBERT GREENE 


These verses are seemingly autobiographical. At least they 
are as autobiographical as the novel in which they were 
printed. But whether or not they express repentance for 
an actual past line of conduct, they certainly do convey a 
considerable amount of genuine feeling from a real or an 
imagined experience. 

The rest of Greene’s repentant poems are, I think, purely 
conventional. In a few cases he mingles the conventional 
repentance with the conventional description of a woman, 
the beauty of the woman being the cause of the manner of 
life for which repentance later on is necessary. Francesco 
is thinking of Isabel, 60 his wife, and of how he has gone 
astray with Infida. His wanton eyes drew him to gaze on 
beauty; he saw her charms — her milk-white brow, her face 
like silver tainted with vermilion, her golden hair,— and 
these beauties entrapped him to sin. By these he slipped 
from virtue’s path. Now despair and sorrow overcome him. 
“Wo worth the faults and follies of mine eie.” 

In the song which the country swain sings “at the return 
of Philador” we have a repentant poem intermingled with 
narrative elements. There is an elaborate description of 
evening 61 and of old Menalcus who sits mourning. He is 
bewailing his past. He had fed sheep, secure from Fortune’s 
ire. Then he had become ambitious and had gone to the city, 
where he followed in evil ways. In conclusion he has repented 
of his wickedness, and has come back to the country to sing, 

“ . . . therefore farewell the follies of my youth.” 62 

60 Vol. VIII., p. 92. 

61 There are several other instances of elaborate settings. In Never 
too Late (Vol. VIII., p. 50) the scene is a riverside, there are flowers. 
It is April. A lady enters, sits down, and begins to speak. In the same 
novel (p. 68) a poem opens with Nature quiet, the sky clear, the air 
still, the birds singing. In Philomela (Vol. XI., p. 133) the time is 
winter, there are frosts, and leafless trees. A shepherd is sighing. 

• 2 In the Paradise of Daintie Devises (Ed. Brydges and Haslewood, 


THE POETRY 


141 


In Francescos Fortunes occurs 63 a series of repentant stanzas. 
There is a stanza for each sign of the zodiac, dealing with 
the season (and often with country life), and ending with 
the statement that the seasons will call repentance to mind. 
The lines are written on the wall as a “testament” to serve 
Francesco as a remembrancer of his follies, and, in spite of 
their monotony of style, have a dignity and effectiveness of 
movement which one would not expect in a poem of this 
kind. 

Another repentant poem is the dialogue between the grass¬ 
hopper and the ant, 64 entirely along the lines of the fable,— 
the spendthrift and repentant grasshopper, and the frugal, 
inhospitable, unforgiving ant. Greene is like the grass¬ 
hopper. Too late he has realized that night, and that 
winter, would come. 

There remains a final group of three or four miscellaneous 
poems which cannot be classed with any of the groups spoken 
of above. One of these is an Epitaph 65 on the heroine of 
a romance, one an oracle, 66 one a hermit’s exordium, 67 —a 
curious poem on the power of the Bible to overcome Satan. 
The last one is among the best-known of Greene’s poems, 
Sephestia’s Lullaby, the 

“Weepe not my wanton smile upon my knee, 

When thou art olde thers griefe inough for thee.” 

Lullabies are comparatively rare in Elizabethan poetry, so 
rare that one does not expect to find an example, so exquisite 
an example, among the poems of Greene. 

The British Bibliographer , Vol. III., p. 97), M. Hunnis has a poem with 
a similar refrain, 

“Good Lord with mercie doe forgive the follies of my youth,” 
merely an illustration of a common theme and a common phraseology. 

63 Vol. VIII., p. 223. 64 Vol. XII., p. 146. 

65 Vol. IV., p. 264. 66 Vol. VI., p. 34. 

67 Vol. VII., p. 29. 


142 


ROBERT GREENE 


All the poems so far spoken of were written in connection 
with the romances. We turn now to the one poem from 
Greene's pen which was not so written, A Maiden's Dreamed 
printed in 1591, “upon the Death of the right Honorable Sir 
Christopher Hatton Knight, late Lord Chancellor of Eng¬ 
land,” 69 who died on November twentieth of that year. 
It is an example of the dream, or vision, poetry so common 
in our earlier literature. A maiden falls asleep and dreams. 
She seems to be near a spring, about which are sundry god¬ 
desses. A knight lies there dead, clad all in armor. Over 
the body of the knight each of the goddesses utters her 
complaint,— Justice, Prudence, Fortitude, Temperance, 
Bountie, Hospitalitie, Religion. All these grieve bitterly. 
More than anything else it is their uncontrolled passion 
which mars the poem. The oft-repetitions of the ending of 
each complaint, 

“At this her sighes and sorrowes were so sore: 

And so she wept that she could speak no more,” 

become, far from effective, after a while even ridiculous. 

There is another poem not found in a novel which has 
been associated with Greene's name. This is A Most Rare 
and Excellent Dreame, Learnedly Set Downe by a Woorthy 
Gentleman, a Brave Schollar, and M. of Artes in Both Univer¬ 
sities, printed in the Phoenix Nest, 1593. 70 As Mr. Child 
suggests, 71 this may be the work of Greene. We know that 

68 Yol. XIV., p. 301. 

69 “This poem had long disappeared, and was not known to be in 
existence till 1845, when it was discovered by Mr. James P. Reardon, 
who sent a transcript of it to the Council of the Shakespeare Society, 
among whose papers it was printed (Vol. II., pp. 127-45).” Collins, 
Introduction to A Maidens Dreame. Plays and Poems of Robert Greene. 
1905. Vol. II., p. 219. 

70 Collier’s Reprint, p. 45. 

71 Cambridge History of English Literature, Vol. IV., p. 135. 


THE POETRY 


143 


certain papers of Greene’s were in the hands of printers 
after his death in the previous year. The “M. of Artes 
in Both Universities” sounds like Greene, surely. And 
there is nothing in the poem which is contrary to Greene’s 
genius. Still there were other “ Masters of Artes in Both 
Universities,” there were other poets who wrote poems of 
the type of the Excellent Dreame. There was so much that 
was conventional in poems of the kind, and there is so little 
in this poem — except its rather unusual length — to dis¬ 
tinguish it from a hundred other poems on the same theme, 
that I do not believe that we can say definitely either that 
it is or that it is not the work of Greene. 

The poem opens with an extended discussion on the cause 
of dreams, after the mediaeval manner. Then follows the 
visit of a lady to her sleeping lover. The lover (in the first 
person) describes her beauties and tells of his restless and 
hopeless state. The lady and he discuss the subject of love 
at some length. She is firm in her denials, and he faints 
away in a swoon. Thereupon she, fearing that he is dead, 
relents; and the lover comes back to life and the waking 
state. 

We may now summarize briefly. Throughout, we have 
seen in Greene a mirror of the poetical interests of the time. 
It is true that there are many of its phases which are not 
represented in his work. He has not the vaunt of immor¬ 
tality which so obsessed the poets of the Pleiade, and which 
came to be characteristic of the English sonneteers of the 
following decade. There are many themes at which he does 
not try his hand. He has no poems which are plays on 
words, no epistles between personages of classical history, 
no songs to Spring, no wedding songs, no poems in praise of 
virginity, or on the theme of “try before you trust,” no 
tributes to deceased friends, no epitaphs. These and other 
themes find no representative in Greene’s volumes. But in 



144 


ROBERT GREENE 


spite of these omissions, Greene’s poetry does to a very con¬ 
siderable degree coincide with the main currents of endeavor. 
We have noted his love poems, with their variations of theme, 
his pastoralism, his descriptions of people, his satires on 
women, his gnomic verse, his Anacreontic, and repentant, 
poems. All of these together identify him with the past, 
the present, and the future of his time. Sometimes in his 
choice of themes he is continuing a tradition which comes 
down from the Middle Ages, sometimes he is pushing his 
way forward in experimentation. Most often he is simply 
doing what he sees others doing,— a follower of fashion. 


Ill 

Greene is typical of the period, both in his use of metres 
already developed and in his love of making experiments in 
verse forms. Most of the poetical measures attracted his 
attention. These he sometimes employed just as he found 
them at hand. Often, however, he employed them as the 
bases of experimentation which, more frequently than in 
any other way, took on the shape of new combinations of 
old forms. 

Greene’s favorite metre, and it was the favorite metre of 
most of the poets who wrote between the time of the decay 
of the poulter’s measure and that of the revival of the 
sonnet, was the six-line iambic pentameter stanza riming 
ababcc. About twenty-five of his poems, or more than a 
hundred stanzas, have this structure. He uses it, without 
discrimination as to theme, for all conceivable subjects: 
love songs, songs of contentment, Anacreontics, pastorals, 
repentances, or gnomic verses. More often than not, the 
metre is used in its ordinary, simple form. 

This six-line stanza is also used in other ways. In several 
poems the concluding couplet of the stanza takes on the 




THE POETRY 


145 


nature of a refrain and is used in the same form, or in an 
appropriate variant form as the individual stanza may re¬ 
quire, throughout the poem. In one case, 72 the sixth line 
only is so used. In the Song of Arion, 73 there are three 
stanzas of this form, plus a concluding stanza of two heroic 
couplets. Lamilia’s Song in the Groatsworth of Wit u con¬ 
sists of two stanzas. The first four lines of each are in con¬ 
formity to the type, but the couplet at the end, very slightly 
in the nature of a refrain, is of hexameters instead of the 
regular pentameters. The poem is made somewhat more 
elaborate, too, by the use of a light-tripping refrain, thrice 
used,— before the first stanza, after the second, and between 
the two. This refrain is a quatrain, abab, a being feminine, 
and each foot consisting of an iambic and an anapestic: 

“Fie, fie on blind fancie, 

It hinders youths joy: 

Fayre Virgins learne by me, 

To count love a toy.” 

Finally in the fable of the grasshopper and the ant, 75 we have 
three stanzas of this metre, intermingled with quatrains and 
prose. 

The ababcc stanza was in use in both pentameter and 
tetrameter forms. Greene nowhere uses the tetrameter 
form in its strict application. But he does write a variant 
tetrameter stanza 76 in which the first and third lines do not 
rime, as one expects, so that we have the scheme, xbybcc . 

Greene’s next most important metre is the tetrameter 
couplet. This metre he uses in fifteen poems, and in doing 
so is following a fashion by no means so common as that of 

72 Francescos Roundelay, Vol., VIII p. 92. 

78 Vol. XII., p. 65. 

7 < Vol. XII., p. 113. 

78 Vol. XII., p. 147. 

78 Vol. III., p. 180; Vol. IV., p. 264. 


146 


ROBERT GREENE 


the stanza just spoken of. The use of the form itself was 
comparatively rare before Greene’s time, and the employ¬ 
ment of trochaics in that form was even rarer. In fact the 
use of any foot but the iambic was unusual. 77 Tusser, to 
be sure, regularly used the tetrameter couplet in anapests, 
sometimes combining seven such couplets to make a “ son¬ 
net.” 78 But Tusser’s work is sporadic rather than typical. 
In the Paradise of Dayntie Devises the tetrameter couplet 
is used, 79 but here it is in iambics. And the tetrameter 
couplet was used to a considerable extent by Turberville. 80 
In Turberville, however, as in the older poets where the form 
is occasionally found, the foot is almost invariably iambic. 
It is not until we come to the work of Greene and Nicholas 
Breton that we find the trochee a staple element in verse 
construction, — thenceforth common enough, in the seven 
syllable, or truncated four-accent line, with many a later 
song writer. Indeed it may perhaps be said that this 
couplet, in the poetry of Greene, Breton, Shakespeare, 
Barnfield, Browne, and Wither, supplanted the ababcc 
form just as that itself had taken the place of the poulter’s 
measure and the fourteener as the popular verse form. 

Professor Schelling thinks it reasonable to regard the 
English trochaic measures “not so much as attempts to 
follow a foreign metrical system, as a continuance of the 
original freedom of English verse as to the distribution of 

77 Gascoigne: — “Note you that commonly now a dayes in English 
rimes (for I dare not call them English verses) we use none other order 
but a foote of two sillables, wherof the first is depressed or made short, 
and the second is elevate or made long; and that sound or scanning 
continueth throughout the verse.” Certayne Notes of Instruction. 
Elizabethan Critical Essays. Ed. Gregory Smith, 1904. Vol. 1., 
p. 50. 

78 British Bibliographer, ed. Brydges and Haslewood, Vol. III., p. 20. 

79 lb. The perfect try all of a faythfull f reend. Yloop. 

80 Ed. Chambers, Vol. II. 


THE POETRY 


147 


syllables.” 81 And he proceeds to state that “most English 
trochaics show a tendency to revert back to the more usual 
iambic system by the addition of an initial unaccented 
syllable.” In illustration of the tendency, he cites Greene’s 
Ode, 82 a poem of thirty-six lines, of which ten are, as he says, 
iambic, the rest trochaic. In this particular case, the illus¬ 
tration bears out the statement. 83 But unless we expand with 
an unusual looseness the meaning of the word tendency I 
cannot believe that the statement of Professor Schelling is 
of great significance, so far as Greene is concerned. To be 
sure, several of his poems are about evenly divided as to 
iambic and trochaic feet. On the other hand, we must 
acknowledge that Greene’s feeling for trochees is pretty 
well developed when we find him writing a poem of thirty- 
eight lines 84 of which practically one hundred per cent are 
in strict conformity to rule, and when we find ten other 
poems in which the per cent of trochees is equal to ninety 
or above. 

The next in importance of Greene’s metres is his blank 
verse. He has ten poems in this metre, about 225 lines. 
It cannot be said that he used blank verse to any great 
advantage (I am not referring to the dramas at all), pr that 
he had any conception of its possibilities. He very seldom 
ends a thought elsewhere than at the end of a line, and he 
makes nothing of the caesura as an element of artistic con¬ 
struction. His blank verse has more of the qualities of the 
heroic couplet than of blank verse proper, except that it 
does not rime. Very often indeed, he intermingles heroic 
Elizabethan Lyrics , ed. Schelling, 1895. Introduction, p. xl. 

s 2 Vol XI., p. 123. 

83 An even better illustration might have been the poem (Vol. IX., 
p. 201) of eighty-eight lines in which twenty-five per cent only are 
trochaic; or the description of Chaucer (Vol. XII., p. 209) of which only 
one-fifth is in this measure. 

8 * Vol. VIII., p. 13. 


148 


ROBERT GREENE 


couplets in his blank verse; and nearly all of his blank 
verse poems have one or more couplets at the end. 

Like his trochaic tetrameter couplet, Greene’s blank verse 
is of some interest in the history of English prosody. The 
use of blank verse in TotteVs Miscellany , by Surrey and 
Grimald, has often been spoken of, as has the blank verse 
of Gascoigne’s Steel Glas (1576). 85 But outside of these 
instances and of the drama, blank verse was very rare in the 
sixteenth century. It was especially rare in the use to which 
Greene put it. As a matter of fact, blank verse lyrics are 
so seldom to be met with in the history of English poetry 
in any of its periods as to make even the rather insignificant 
ones of Greene worth a casual mention. 

Nine of Greene’s poems are in quatrains. Five of these 
are iambic pentameter, riming abab. One of these abab 
quatrains 86 is a little irregular in having after each two 
lines a short line of five or six syllables. Three poems are 
in iambic pentameter quatrains, but these rime abba. One 
other poem 87 is not really a quatrain at all, being merely 
fourteeners printed as broken lines, as was the custom of 
the day. 88 

Of the heroic couplet there is very little use in Greene’s 
poetry. He has but one poem in that kind of couplets, 
and it is very short — only six lines. 89 We have seen, 

85 One might perhaps mention the blank verse of Spenser’s earlier 
translation of the Visions of Bellay (Grosart, Vol. III., p. 231). These 
Spenser later rewrote. 

86 Vol. VI., p. 65. 

87 Vol. III., p. 248. 

88 The absence from Greene’s poetry of fourteeners, with this one 
exception, and of the poulter’s measure altogether, is interesting as 
showing to what extent these metres had decreased in popularity as 
lyric forms. From being the almost universal measures of the sixties 
and seventies, they have become by Greene’s time almost archaic. 

89 Vol. X., p. 200. 


THE POETRY 


149 


however, that Greene almost always used pentameter 
couplets in connection with his blank verse. 

Various other metres were used by Greene at different 
times. These may be dismissed somewhat briefly, before 
we come to the elaborate stanzas which he was so fond of 
using. One of these metres is the rime royal, in which 
Greene’s longest poem is written. 90 Another use to which 
Greene put the rime royal is the combination of two such 
stanzas to make what he called a “sonnet.” 91 It is hard 
to say whether Greene meant these to be sonnets or not. 
The fact, however, that in the short poems the stanzas of 
rime royal always occur in groups of two or four may, even 
though the stanzas are printed separated, indicate that 
Greene had in his mind a poem to consist of fourteen lines 
or a multiple of fourteen lines, no matter of what those 
fourteen lines might consist. 

Of the sonnet proper Greene makes practically no use. 
In view of the excessive amount of sonneteering which had 
already begun before his death this absence is interesting. 
There are only three real sonnets, — if a sonnet may be de¬ 
fined as merely a one-stanza poem of fourteen lines, — and 
no two of these are alike. One of them follows 92 the rime 
scheme abbaaccadeedff, with the division in thought into the 
octave and sestette, but not into the smaller divisions of 
quatrain and triplet. Another 93 consists of three abba 
quatrains (all different) with a concluding couplet. Still a 
third 94 —if it be Greene’s—is of the regular Shakesperiantype. 

90 A Maidens Dreame. Whether or not the Rare and Excelent 
Dreame of the Phoenix Nest is Greene’s, it also is in rime royal. 

« For example, Vol. XL, p. 142; Vol. XII., p. 137. 

92 Vol. XII., p. 129. 93 Vol. VIII., p. 169. 

94 Collins’ ed. Vol. II., p. 248. None of the earlier editions of 
Menaphon contain this poem entitled, “Dorastus (in Love-passion) 
writes these lines in Praise of his loving and best-beloved Fawnia.” 
Although Collins and Dyce reprint it from editions of the late seven- 


150 


ROBERT GREENE 


Ten-line sonnets were not uncommon during the period; 
Greene has two of them,— Shakesperian sonnets with one 
of the quatrains left out. One of these ten-line sonnets 
forms the second stanza of the third poem just mentioned 
above. 

The ottava rima has one example, the repentance poem 
spoken of above, which devotes a stanza to each of the signs 
of the zodiac. Another poem 95 seems to consist of two 
ten-stress couplets with lines divided to make eight five- 
stress lines, plus two five-stress couplets, twelve lines in all. 
The last of these isolated metres is in Menaphon’s Song to 
Pesana. 96 Here we have a poem of twelve lines of which 
the simplest analysis seems to be that it consists of iambic 
pentameter couplets, each line followed (thus breaking up 
the couplet) by a short line of five or six syllables, and the 
short lines also riming. Thus: 

U-| U-| U-| U-| U- a 

U-j U-j U b 

0-|U — I U — I U — jo— a 

U-| 0-1 U b 

In the experiments with classical metres Greene took 
little part. He attempted a couple of poems 97 in Latin, one 
in the Sapphic, and one in the elegiac, measure. But with 
neither of these, nor with any other stanzaic measure did 
he work in English. His sole experimentation was con¬ 
fined to the writing of English hexameters. In the four 
poems which he wrote in this measure, 98 Greene in no way 

teenth century, it seems reasonable at least to retain some doubt as 
to its authenticity. 

96 Vol. III., p. 125. 

96 Vol. VI., p. 105. 

97 Vol. VII., p. 125; ib., p. 145. 

98 Vol. II., p. 219; Vol. IX., p. 151; Ib., p. 159; 76.., p. 293. 


THE POETRY 


151 


followed the laws of Roman verse construction. Instead he 
preserved the customary English accents, and made them 
coincide with the metrical stress. 

It is not surprising to find that the classical metres made 
small appeal to Greene whose real poetic ability lay in 
fanciful and sentimental songs in short-lined, and, we shall 
soon see, in capriciously elaborate measures. With a talent 
of such a nature he would have felt himself bound down by 
the restrictions of the Latin models, and so it is true that 
“he could never have cultivated the classic metres with any 
considerable result.” 99 

In two of his poems Greene revives an old-time custom 
of intermingling French and English. One of these poems 100 
consists of nine stanzas, each of two lines of English and 
four lines of French,— the French portion being the same 
in all the stanzas. 

Sweet Adon’, darst not glaunce thine eye, 

N’oserez vous, mon bel amyf 

Upon thy Venus that must die, 

Je vous en prie, pitie me: 

N’oserez vous, mon bel, mon bel, 

N’oserez vous, mon bel amyf 

Greene’s second poem of this kind is one of seventeen lines 
divided into three parts . 101 These parts are all extremely 
irregular, and contain, between them all, six lines of French. 

We now come to the numerous elaborated stanzas which 
Greene employed. These may perhaps be best taken up 
singly in the order in which they occur in the novels. The 
first of these, and one of the most complicated stanzas not 

99 S. L. Wolff, Englische Studien, Vol. 37, p. 334. 

100 Mr. Alfred Noyes has a poem in this same stanza form, (“Our 

Lady of the Sea.” Oxford Book of Victorian Verse, p. 935) except 
that his stanza consists of eight lines, the additional number being 
caused by the insertion of two lines just before the last two lines of 
French. 101 Vol. VIII., p. 217. 


152 


ROBERT GREENE 


only in Greene’s work but in the whole period, is in Mena- 
phon’s Song. 102 The poem is one of two stanzas of fourteen 
lines each. This stanza Professor Erskine 103 resolves into 
the equivalent of Sidney’s ten-line epigrammatic form, 
which is the Shakespearian sonnet minus one quatrain, by 
saying that it is composed “of two quatrains in tetrapodies, 
followed by a pentapody couplet”; and that, of the stanza 
thus resolved into ten lines, the first, third, fifth, and seventh 
lines “are broken by a syncopated foot at the second accent.” 
The explanation seems even more complicated than the 
stanza. Perhaps it would be better to take the stanza 
just as it is, and simply say that it consists of a group of 
four triplets and one couplet. Each triplet consists of two 
truncated two-stress trochaic feet plus a third line of 
iambic tetrameter. The rime of the short lines is uniform 
throughout; the longer lines rime in pairs, the first two 
going together, and the last two. The couplet at the end 
is heroic and has still a third rime. The scheme is thus 
aab aab aac aac dd. 

Lodge in his Rosalynde, 1590, in Montanus’ Sonnet, imi¬ 
tates this stanza of Greene’s. He omits, however, the con¬ 
cluding couplet, his two-stress lines do not all end in the 
same word — most frequently they do not rime at all,— 
and the long lines rime in alternation. In Tarlton’s News 
out of Purgatory , issued anonymously in 1590, we have 
another variation of Greene’s stanza. Whether this 104 poem 
is, or is not, meant to be a parody on Lodge’s poem, as Mr. 
Bullen suggests, 105 is not of interest here, but the metre as 

1M Vol. VI., p. 41. 

103 The Elizabethan Lyric , p. 238. 

104 Ronsards Description of his Mistris, which he Weres in his Hands 
in Purgatory. 

106 Lyrics from the Dramatists of the Elizabethan Age. Ed. Bullen. 
1901, p. 287. 


THE POETRY 


153 


worked out in that poem deserves notice. The stanza there 
is reduced to eight lines, two triplets and an iambic tet¬ 
rameter (instead of pentameter) concluding couplet. The 
short lines of the triplets do not rime, the long ones do. 

The second of Greene’s elaborate stanzas is to be seen in 
Sephestia’s Song to her Child. 106 This is a stanza of eight 
lines riming in couplets, the fourth couplet ending in the 
same word and employing nearly the same phraseology in 
all three stanzas. The couplets are truncated trochaic 
tetrameter, and a certain syncopated effect is produced by 
the frequent, but irregular, omission of the unaccented 
syllable in the second trochee. The song has a refrain, 
used, as Elizabethan refrains almost always are, before the 
first, after the last, and between all of the middle stanzas. 
This refrain is a couplet of four-stress lines made up of ten 
syllables, and is interesting both for the use of the dactyls 
and the lightness of movement produced by the six un¬ 
accented syllables. Thus: 

“Weepe not my wanton smile upon thy knee, 

When thou art olde thers griefe inough for thee.” 

In Menaphon’s Roundelay 107 we again have a stanza of ten 
lines. It seems to consist of two quatrains plus a concluding 
heroic couplet. Of these quatrains, the first rimes abba, 
and has the first and fourth in five-stress, and the second 
and third in two-stress. The second quatrain rimes cdcd, 
having the second and fourth in five-stress, and the first 
and third in two-stress. The measure throughout is iambic, 
except for an occasional trochee at the beginning of a line. 

The complicated six-line stanza used in Doron’s Jigge 108 
consists of a tetrapody iambic couplet, the two lines of which 
are separated by a couplet of two-stress dactylic lines; the 

iw Vol. VI., p. 43. 107 Vol. VI., p. 59. 108 Vol. VI., p. 69. 


154 


ROBERT GREENE 


whole is followed by a two-stress anapestic couplet. The 
rime scheme is thus abbacc, and the rime bb occurs in all the 
stanzas. Greene calls this song a roundelay; rightly so, 
in as much as a roundelay is a “light poem, originally a 
shepherd’s dance, in which an idea or phrase is repeated, 
often as a verse, or stanzaic refrain.” 109 

Another variety of six-line stanza is that consisting funda¬ 
mentally of an abab iambic pentameter quatrain followed by 
two iambic trimeter lines, unrimed. There are four stanzas, 
and the trimeter lines after the first quatrain rime with 
those after the second quatrain in cdcd fashion. Those after 
the third quatrain rime with the lines after the fourth. 

A curious stanza 110 is that made up of nine lines and 
riming abc abc ddb. All the lines are iambic pentameter 
except dd which are dimeter. 

On three different occasions 111 Greene made use of an 
eight-line stanza. This stanza consists of four pentameter 
lines with the second and fourth riming, but with the first 
and third unrimed. Following these four lines are two one- 
stress iambic lines unrimed. The stanza is completed by 
a heroic couplet. 

Radagon’s Sonnet in Francescos Fortunes 112 consists of ten- 
line stanzas. The stanzas are made up of two iambic pen- 
tapody quatrains each followed by an iambic dimeter line. 
All the dimeter lines have the same rime. The two quatrains 
of each stanza exchange rimes, the first being abba , the second 
being baab. 

One of the most elaborately complicated metres is an 
eight-line stanza consisting of one-, two- and five-stress 
lines, all of which are iambic. The first, third, fifth, and 

109 Schelling, Elizabethan Lyrics. Introduction, p. liii. 

110 Vol. VIII., p. 157. 

111 Vol. VIII., p. 175; Vol. IX., p. 214; Vol. XII., p. 242. 

112 Vol. VIII., p. 200. 


THE POETRY 


155 


eighth are pentameter; the second and fourth are dimeter; 
and the sixth and seventh are one-stress. The first two 
pentameters rime with each other; and the last two. The 
dimeters rime with each other; the one-stress lines have no 
rime, either with themselves or with anything else in the 
stanza. 

The last of Greene’s elaborate metres 113 is one of six 
lines. It consists of two tetrapody couplets (about half 
trochaic, half iambic) with a dimeter trochaic couplet between 
them. 

This tendency toward the elaborate stanza, which we 
have been discussing at perhaps tedious length, was a late 
development in Greene’s career. The lyrics in the earlier 
romances are simple in form, being for the most part in 
the ababcc stanza, in blank verse, or in quatrain. In Mena - 
phon and Francescos Fortunes (1589 and 1590), however, 
his fancy for experiment ran wild, and he produced multi¬ 
tudinous effects with long and short lines, and combinations 
of long and short lines, employing in the process all varieties, 
and combinations of varieties, of poetic feet. 

This keen interest in experimentation which Greene mani¬ 
fests is a very striking characteristic of his time. All the 
poets show this interest, Breton, Sidney, Lodge. But in 
no one of them, Sidney perhaps excepted, is there greater 
fertility in the production of new and unique effects. 


IV 

Greene’s poetry is best appreciated when it is recollected 
in tranquillity. Under such conditions that portion which 
has no especial interest drops out of mind; and the memory, 
thus rid of its impedimenta, not only retains with vividness 

“3 Vol. VIII., p. 212. 


156 


ROBERT GREENE 


certain individual poems, but creates for itself a unity of 
impression which arises from the contemplation of the 
ensemble. Not all poets demand this remoteness, for what 
the reader gets from them is something immediate which 
comes directly from contact with their works. But with 
a man like Greene, it is better to remove oneself to a 
little distance in order to obtain from him the pleasure 
which it is his to give. 

There is no message in Greene’s poems, no criticism of 
life, no truth and high seriousness. Greene as a poet is 
not great any more than he is great as a dramatist or as a 
writer of romance. But he is, when he is at his best, grace¬ 
ful and charming. There is an atmosphere about some of 
his poems, a fragrance which lingers and becomes the more 
fragrant from being remembered. 

Greene is not a personal singer. Except as no artist can 
fail to manifest somewhat of his individuality, these songs 
are not an expression of Greene himself. They are largely 
conventional,— poetical exercises rather than an outpouring 
of lyric emotion. The origin of them is in an impulse of 
art rather than of feeling. It is not a song of himself that 
Greene sings, nor is he giving the record of any emotional 
experience. Not for this reason, then, can we cherish his 
poems. 

The quality which pervades the poetry is the same as 
that which gives the charm to Menaphon. Greene’s was a 
sensitive nature. It took over much of sentiment and of 
the manner of expression from the whole movement of the 
Renaissance; it caught the spirit of that age so full at once 
of activity and of romantic thought. All of these it used; 
but it idealized them. It imparted a spirit of freshness 
and refinement, an elevation which was at the same time 
beautiful and idyllic. So it was in the poetry. Greene 
sang because others were singing and he sang much the 



THE POETRY 


157 


same things. But he did it with a sweetness of voice and 
a delicacy of understanding, whether he piped his songs in 
Arcadia, or trilled and carolled the pangs of love, or exe¬ 
cuted graceful turns of melody. Always, in those poems 
which we remember, there is charm. 

I shall not attempt here to make a representative selec¬ 
tion from Greene. The poems we choose are not always 
representative. Here and there, we take from out a poet’s 
work a little phrase, a line, a stanza, or refrain, often iso¬ 
lated — somewhat meaningless even, as it stands alone. 
But we remember it. And we wrap up in it very often the 
whole significance of that poet’s life. It has, like Brown¬ 
ing’s star, opened its soul to us and therefore we love it. 


The Shepheards Wives Song 

Ah what is love? It is a pretty thing, 

As sweet unto a shepheard as a king, 

And sweeter too: 

For kings have cares that waite upon a Crowne, 
And cares can make the sweetest love to frowne: 
Ah then, ah then, 

If countrie loves such sweet desires do gaine, 
What Lady would not love a Shepheard Swaine? 

His flockes are foulded, he comes home at night, 
As merry as a king in his delight, 

And merrier too: 

For kings bethinke them what the state require, 
Where Shepheards carelesse Carroll by the fire. 
Ah then, ah then, 

If countrie loves such sweet desires gaine 
What Lady would not love a Shepheard Swaine. 


158 


ROBERT GREENE 


Maesia’s Song 

Sweet are the thoughts that savour of content, 
the quiet mind is richer than a crowne, 

Sweet are the nights in carelesse slumber spent, 
the poore estate scorne fortunes angrie frowne, 
Such sweet content, such minds, such sleep, such blis 
beggers injoy when Princes oft do mis. 

The homely house that harbors quiet rest, 
the cottage that affoords no pride nor care, 

The meane that grees with Countrie musick best, 
the sweet consort of mirth and musicks fare, 
Obscured life sets downe a type of blis, 
a minde content both crowne and kingdome is. 

Philomelas Ode 

Sitting by a River’s side, 

Where a silent streame did glide, 

Muse I did of many things, 

That the mind in quiet brings. . . . 

Lamilias Song 

Fie, fie on blind fancie, 

It hinders youths joy: 

Fayre Virgins learne by me, 

To count love a toy. 

Sonnet 

Cupid abroade was lated in the night, 

His winges were wet with ranging in the raine, 
Harbour he sought, to mee hee tooke his flight, 
To dry his plumes I heard the boy complaine. 


THE POETRY 


159 


I opte the doore, and graunted his desire, 

I rose my selfe and made the wagge a fire. 

Looking more narrow by the fiers flame, 

I spied his quiver hanging by his back: 

Doubting the boy might my misfortune frame, 

I would have gone for feare of further wrack. 

But what I drad, did mee poore wretch betide: 
For forth he drew an arrow from his side. 

He pierst the quick, and I began to start, 

A pleasing wound but that it was too hie, 

His shaft procurde a sharpe yet sugred smart, 
Away he flewe, for why his wings were dry. 

But left the arrow sticking in my breast: 

That sore I greevde I welcomd such a guest. 

Infidas Song 

Sweet Adon’, darst not glaunce thine eye. 

N’oserez vous, mon bel corny? 

Upon thy Venus that must die, 

Je vous en prie, pitie me: 

N’oserez vous, mon bel, mon bel, 

N’oserez vous, mon bel amy? 


Sephestias Song to Her Childe 

Weepe not my wanton smile upon my knee, 
When thou art olde ther's griefe inough for thee. 
Mothers wagge, pretie boy, 

Fathers sorrow, fathers joy. 

When thy father first did see 
Such a boy by him and mee, 


160 


ROBERT GREENE 


He was glad, I was woe, 

Fortune changde made him so, 

When he left his pretie boy, 

Last his sorrowe first his joy. 

Weepe not my wanton smile upon my knee: 
When thou arte olde ther’s griefe inough for thee. 

Philom^laes Second Oade 

Fields were bare, and trees unclad, 

Flowers withered, byrdes were sad: 

When I saw a shepheard fold, 

Sheepe in Coate to shunne the cold : 
Himselfe sitting on the grasse, 

That with frost withered was: 

Sighing deepely, thus gan say, 

Love is folly when astray: . . . 

Thence growes jarres thus I find 
Love is folly, if unkind; 

Yet doe men most desire 
To be heated with this fire: 

Whose flame is so pleasing hot, 

That they burne, yet feele it not: . . . 

Here he paused and did stay, 

Sighed and rose and went away. 

Dorons Jigge 

... I gan to woo 

This sweete little one, 

This bonny pretie one. 

I wooed hard a day or two, 

Till she bad: 

Be not sad, 


THE POETRY 


161 


Wooe no more I am thine owne, 

Thy dearest little one, 

Thy truest pretie one: 

Thus was faith and firme love showne, 
As behooves 
Shepheards loves. 


Menaphons Song 

Some say Love 
Foolish Love 

Doth rule and governe all the Gods, 

I say Love, 

Inconstant Love 
Sets mens senses farre at ods. 

Some sweare Love 
Smooth’d face Love 

Is sweetest sweete that men can have: 
I say Love, 

Sower Love 

Makes vertue yeeld as beauties slave. 
A bitter sweete, a follie worst of all 
That forceth wisedome to be follies thrall. 


Dorons Ecologue Joynd with Carmelas 
Carmela 

Ah Doron, ah my heart, thou art as white, 

As is my mothers Calfe or brinded Cow, 

Thine eyes are like the glow-worms in the night, 
Thine haires resemble thickest of the snow. 


162 


ROBERT GREENE 


Doron 

Carmela deare, even as the golden ball 
That Venus got, such are thy goodly eyes, 

When cherries juice is jumbled therewithall, 

Thy breath is like the steeme of apple pies. 

Thy lippes resemble two Cowcumbers faire, 

Thy teeth like to the tuskes of fattest swine, 

Thy speach is like the thunder in the aire: 

Would God thy toes, thy lippes and all were mine. 

Carmela 

I thanke you Doron, and will thinke on you, 

I love you Doron, and will winke on you. 

I seale your charter pattent with my thummes, 

Come kisse and part for feare my mother comes. 

The reader familiar with Elizabethan poetry will recog¬ 
nize much that is conventional. He will perceive readily 
that Greene is the child of his time. They were all a family 
of poets,— Greene, Breton, Lodge, Barnfield. Shakespeare 
was only a more gifted brother. But such a reader, or one 
who is not so aware of Greene’s likeness to his fellows, 
cannot fail to see the delicacy with which these poems are 
executed. 

We have here only eleven of the ninety, it is true, and 
not all of those — a selection in miniature. It contains, 
nevertheless, the best of Greene as a poet, and small as it is, 
it makes up the most pleasing part of his works. Greene 
is often insincere; he is interested in literature for what it 
yields him. These lyrics he wrote because they were the 
fashion. But of songs imbedded in a romance or tale of 
any sort we do not expect much. We judge them for their 


THE POETRY 


163 


beauty, and are satisfied if they give us pretty sentiment 
or musical verses. We come to them disinterestedly. 
Perhaps we do not quite, with Carlyle, make our claim a 
zero and get infinity for our quotient. But when we get 
pleasure, the pleasure is gain. 

The selection reveals, too, a phase of Greene as a man. 
It shows the more tender, graceful side of his nature. There 
is nothing garish about it. Greene’s taste in discrimination 
between the fanciful and the ultra-fanciful was not always 
sure. His fondness for fine clothes and his manner of wear¬ 
ing his beard are characteristics which appear in his writings. 
There is manifested a feeling for the artistic; at the same 
time, there is no limit before which to stop. If he is writing 
a romance, he has it romantic to excess; a didactic pamphlet, 
he forces ideas upon us at every turn. In his poetry, taken 
altogether, the same defect is present. But with the poetry 
— something which is impossible with the prose works — 
we can cut away the parts which are bad, and leave that 
which is good discernible and clear. Reduced thus to 
minute compass, sublimated, what is either dull or fan¬ 
tastic in the mass becomes pure and undefiled. It can be 
recognized as the product of a genuinely artistic imagination. 

Greene has not the honor of a place in the Golden Treasury. 



CHAPTER VI 

CHRONOLOGY OF GREENE’S NON-DRAMATIC WORKS 


For most of Greene’s works a statement of the date is an 
easy matter. In connection with a few of them there are 
difficult problems. 

The first novel which we have from Greene’s pen is 
Mamillia , a Mirrour or looking-glasse for the Ladies of Eng - 
lande. This work is by “ Robert Greene, Graduate in 
Cambridge,” and it was “Imprinted at London for Thomas 
Woodcocke, 1583.” Of this 1583 edition, one of two things 
must be true. Either it was not the first edition, or the 
work was delayed in publication. That it was written 
earlier is clear from an entry in the Stationers’ Register 
(Arber, II., 378) as follows: 

3rd October, 1580. 

Thomas Woodcock: Lycenced unto him “Manilia,” a lookinge 
glasse for ye ladies of England. 

If the year 1580 saw an edition, all copies have been lost. 
On the other hand, there is no satisfactory explanation for 
the three years’ delay of publication, especially when we 
remember that it was licensed in 1580 to the very man for 
whom it was printed in 1583. 

Mamillia: the second part of the triumph of Pallas offers 
a similar problem. It is dated “From my Studie in Clare- 
hall the vij of Iulie,” presumably in 1583. Two months 
later it was entered on the Register (II., p. 428): 

6 September, 1583. 

Master Ponsonbye: Licenced to him under Master Watkins hande 
a booke entituled “Mamilia, The seconde parte of the tryumphe of 
Pallas wherein with perpetuall fame the constancie of gentlewomen 
is Canonized. ” 


164 


CHRONOLOGY OF THE NON-DRAMATIC WORKS 165 

The title-page declares it to be “by Robert Greene, Maister 
of Arts, in Cambridge,” and to have been printed at London 
by “Th. C. for William Ponsonbie.” The date, surprisingly, 
is 1593. We have here a difference of ten years, a difference 
as strangely unaccountable as that of the First Part , for 
the Second Part, too, was both licensed by, and printed for, 
the same man. Various theories have been propounded, 
among them those of Bernhardi, 1 as an explanation of these 
facts; but the wisest course seems to be that of saying merely 
that there is no explanation. 

Of the Myrrour of Modestie there is nothing to state 
except that there was apparently only one edition, that 
“Imprinted at London by Roger Warde” 1584, and that 
there is no entry of the pamphlet in the Stationers’ 
Register. 

The year 1584 saw the production of four other works. 
The first of these was Greenes Garde of Fande. Of this work 
the earliest known edition is that of 1587. I think there 
can be no doubt, however, that the pamphlet published in 
1587 by Ponsonby is to be identified with that entered by 
him on April 11, 1584, that “yt is granted unto him that if 
he gett the card of phantasie lawfullie allowed unto him, 
that then he shall enioye yt as his own copie.” 

As regards Arbasto, in spite of the fact that Grosart 
found in the S. R. no early notice of it, the pamphlet was, 
nevertheless, entered therein on the thirteenth of August, 
1584. 2 It was published that same year by Jackson, and 
it is the first of Greene’s works to bear on its title-page his 
celebrated motto, “Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile 
dulci.” 

1 Robert Greenes Leben und Schriften. Eine historisch-kritische 
Studie. Leipzig. 1874. 

2 Hugh Jackson: Receaved of him for printinge a booke intituled 
Arbasto the Anatomie of fortune . . . vj d. 


166 


ROBERT GREENE 


Concerning Morando, the Tritameron of Love , there is some 
doubt as to the date of its first appearance. There is an 
entry in the S. R. by Edward White for August 8, 1586; 
but this entry, it is more than likely, refers to an edition 
in two parts (the only edition of which we have any knowl¬ 
edge) by the same publisher in 1587. Grosart (Vol. III., 
p. 44) mentions a “Part 1st, of 1584, in the Bodleian,” 
and it is probable that there was such an edition. For 
as Storojenko (Gros. Yol. I., p. 75) points out, the Earl of 
Arundel, to whom the work is dedicated, “was committed 
to the Tower for high treason in the following year” 3 and 
he remained in the Tower for the rest of his life. It is not 
likely that Greene would have dedicated a pamphlet to him 
after that event. 

One work only dates from 1585. This is the Planetomachia: 
or the first parte of the generall opposition of the seven 
Planets. It was imprinted for Thomas Cadman. 

After 1585 we have no new work of Greene until 1587. 
But for June 11 of that year, the S. R. has an entry: 

Edward Aggas: Received of him for Grene his farewell to follie 
. . . vj d. 

No copy of an edition of 1587 has come down to us. The 
earliest that we have is of the edition of 1591, printed by 
Thomas Scarlet, and giving as Greene’s title, “Utriusque 
Academiae in Artibus magister.” Now there is no reason 
for believing that an edition of 1587 was ever made. That 
it was written then in some form or other, is possibly true. 4 

3 April 25, 1585. See D. N. B. for Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel. 
Arundel had become a Catholic in September of the preceding year. 

4 The fact that the Farewell to Follie is, as we have seen (p. 23) 
related definitely to that large group of didactic and quasi-didactic 
frame-work tales which were so abundant in Greene’s work about 1587, 
and the fact that it, of all of Greene’s work, shows the largest amount 


CHRONOLOGY OF THE NON-DRAMATIC WORKS 167 

It is also true that it may have been published later in the 
form in which it was originally written. There is no way 
of knowing about that. But, it is evident that the prefatory 
addresses at least, as we now have them, were not written 
before the end of 1590. The statement, “I presented you 
alate with my mourning garment” 5 fixes November 2, 1590, 
as the earliest date, for that was the date on which the Mourn¬ 
ing Garment was licensed. 6 

Of the Farewell to Follie , Edward Aggas either was, or 
was to have been, the publisher. He actually was the 
publisher of Penelopes Web which was prepared about this 
time and which may, of course, as Simpson suggests, 7 have 
been substituted for the Farewell to Follie. Penelopes Web 
was licensed June 26, 1587, and was printed that year. 
Three months later, on September 18, Euphues his Censure to 
Philautus was licensed to Edward White, and this book too 
was published in 1587. 

On March 29, 1588, there was allowed unto this same 
publisher, Edward White, the pamphlet “intytuled Perymedes 
the black smith; and on December 9, Alcida Greenes Meta¬ 
morphosis was entered by John Wolf. Whether for Edward 
White is not known, for the earliest edition we possess is that 
printed by George Purslowe in 1617. 8 Sometime between 

of borrowing from Primaudaye’s Academy (translated 1586) may put 
probability upon the year 1587, as the date of composition. 

6 Vol. IX., p. 230. 

6 References to Tomliuclin (Tamberlaine [?] pub. 1590) and to 
Martin Marprelate are taken by Simpson (School of Shakespeare, Vol. 
II., p. 349) as further evidence that 1591 is the date of the first edition. 

7 School of Shakespeare. Vol. II., p. 350. 

8 There can be no doubt that there was an earlier edition than 
that of 1617. The piece is mentioned among Greene’s most popular 
works by R. B. the author of “Greene hisfuneralles” which was licensed 
to John Danter February 1, 1594. I fail to see any force to Storo- 
jenko’s argument that the book was not published at once after Decern- 


168 


ROBERT GREENE 


March 29 and December 9, 1588, it is most likely that 
Pandosto should be placed. This celebrated pamphlet was 
printed by Thomas Orwin for Thomas Cadman in 1588. 
There is no entry of Pandosto in the S. R. 

On February 1, of the next year, was licensed the Spanish 
Masquer ado, the first of Greene’s extant works which was 
not a novel. It was reprinted the same year. 

Thomas Orwin also printed, this time for Sampson Clarke, 
Menaphon, of which the entry in the S. R. was made 
August 23, 1589. During this same year Ciceronis Amor 
also was printed, 9 although there was no entry of it in 
the S. R. 

The earliest novel of 1590 is Orpharion, which was licensed 
on January 9. 10 This work must have been planned and pos¬ 
sibly written nearly a year before the date of licensing, 11 for 
Greene mentions it in his preface to Perymedes , March 29, 
1588, when he speaks of u Orpharion, which I promise to make 
you merry with the next tearme.” In the preface to the Orpha¬ 
rion itself he apologizes for the long delay, when he says, “I 
have long promised my Orpharion ... at last it is leapt into 
the Stacioners Shoppe, but not from my Study . . . the 
Printer had it long since: marry whether his presse were out 
of tune, Paper deere, or some other secret delay drive it off, 
it hath line this twelve months in the suds.” The earliest 
edition of which we have an example is that of 1599. 

On April 15, the Royal Exchange was licensed. This work 
contained “sundry aphorisms of Phylosophie,” and was 
“Fyrst written in Italian and dedicated to the Signorie of 

her 9, 1588. Storojenko argues that it must have been published after 
Nashe’s Anatomie of Absurditie, else, Alcida being against women, 
Nashe could not have spoken of Greene as the “ Homer of Women.” 
(Gros. Vol. I., p. 95.) 

9 For Thomas Newman and John Winington. 

10 Not licensed in 1589 as Grosart (Vol. XII., p. 3) thought. 

11 Licensed by Edward White. 


CHRONOLOGY OF THE NON-DRAMATIC WORKS 169 

Venice, nowe translated into English and offered to the Cittie 
of London.” The author of La Burza Reale is unknown. 

With regard to the other works of 1590, the situation is 
complicated. The only date that we can fix is that of the li¬ 
censing of Greene’s Mourning Garment on November 2,1590. 
That two other novels belong to this same year, is shown 
by their title-pages; the Never too Late and the Francescos 
Fortunes: or the second part of Greenes never too late. But 
it is not certain to what part of the year to assign them, 
for there are no entries in the S. R. There is a complica¬ 
tion, too, which arises from the uncertainty of the date of 
Greene’s Vision , which may, or more likely may not, belong 
to this same year. 

The title-page of the Vision (which was undoubtedly one 
of the many papers which Chettle, in Kind-harts Dream , tells 
us were left in booksellers’ hands) states that it was “ Written 
at the instant of his death.” Thomas Newman, the pub¬ 
lisher, in his dedicatory address tells us that “it was one 
of the last works of a wel known Author,” and assures us 
that although “manie have published repentaunces under 
his name,” yet there are “none more unfeigned than this, 
being euerie word his owne: his own phrase, his own method.” 
Greene’s address to the Gentlemen Readers is, I think, clearly 
a genuine statement from his own pen, and may, it seems 
to me, be considered as having been among the latest of 
Greene’s writings. There is no reason, that I can see, for 
the doubt expressed by Mr. Collins as to this fact; 12 nor 
for not thinking that the Vision was prepared for publication 

12 “It would be interesting to be able to determine whether the 
Address to the Gentlemen Readers was written, as it may have been, 
by himself at the instant of his death, or whether it was written in 
1590 under the stress of a severe illness when he thought himself on 
the point of death, or whether, finally, it was a forgery of the pub¬ 
lisher.” (Collins, Vol. I., General Introduction, p. 26, note 2.) 


170 


ROBERT GREENE 


very shortly before Greene’s death in an attempt to relieve 
if possible the dire poverty of those last days. 

The saying, however, that the work was prepared for 
publication late in August, 1592, is not saying that it was 
necessarily written then. Indeed, I am inclined to believe 
that it was not written then. The style is much less direct 
than that of the ending of the Groatwsorth of Wit and of 
the Repentance. Moreover, the pamphlet seems rather to 
be a frame-work tale for the two stories by “Chaucer” and 
by “Gower” than to partake of the nature of the other 
repentance pamphlets. Neither do the three poems which 
the work contains resemble the poems of the more serious 
novels. And so it does not seem unreasonable to suppose 
that it may have been written at any time between a date a 
few months subsequent to the date of the events to which 
it relates (the publication of the Cobbler of Canterbury in 
1590 and the subsequent repentance for folly on Greene’s 
part) and the time of Greene’s last illness. That it may have 
been written as a frame-work tale and at the last moment 
made over into a repentant pamphlet is not an altogether 
impossible supposition. 

The Vision is of considerable importance in determining 
the order of the three novels, besides Orpharion , which date 
definitely from 1590, for it contains a reference to two of 
them: “Only this (father Gower) I must end my nunquam 
sera est, and for that I craue pardon: . . . looke as speedily 
as the presse will serue for my mourning garment.” 13 Mr. 
Collins, on the basis of these references, places the composi¬ 
tion of the Vision in the midst of the composition of the 
other two. As I have said, I do not see how all of it at least 
can be put there. “After I was burdened with the penning 
of the Cobbler of Canterbury” does not sound like a state¬ 
ment immediately following the publication of that las- 
13 Vol. XII., p. 274. 


CHRONOLOGY OF THE NON-DRAMATIC WORKS 171 

civious pamphlet. And there is another consideration 
against the Vision’s having been written just then. The 
events described in the Vision undoubtedly occurred in 
1590. But never in 1590, nor until much later, was Greene 
personal in his writings. We think of him as having talked 
a great deal about himself, and the death-bed pamphlets 
are those we usually read first. But we must remember 
that by 1590 Greene had really said very little, and that 
it was not until August, 1592, that he wrote of himself 
personally — in the Groatsworth of Wit and in the Repentance. 
We can hardly, therefore, place the Vision as early as 1590. 
This dating does not in any way conflict with the references 
to the Never too Late and the Mourning Garment. Greene 
in the Vision was looking back upon events as they occurred, 
and from that point of view did have those books still to 
finish. 

To come back now to the other novels. Greene evidently 
was writing the Never too Late when the events described 
in the Vision occurred, for he asked Father Gower for per¬ 
mission to finish it before he took up the Mourning Garment. 
At the end of the Never too Late, however, Greene promises 
us a sequel: “As soone as may bee Gentlemen, looke for 
Francescos further fortunes, and after that my Farewell to 
Follie, and then adieu to all amorous Pamphlets.” 14 The 
Francescos Fortunes soon followed, which with more show 
of protestation than of sincerity, perhaps, Greene says 
would not have gone to press “had it not been promised.” 15 
And then, before preparing the Farewell to Follie which had 
been promised at the end of Never too Late, Greene turned 
to write the Mourning Garment to which he makes reference 
in the Vision, and which he speaks of in the preface to the 
Farewell to Follie. 1 * 

“ Vol. VIII., p. 109. 15 Vol. VIII., p. 118. 

w Vol. IX., p. 230. 


172 


ROBERT GREENE 


So much then for the novels of 1590, with Orpharion first 
on January 9, and Mourning Garment last, on November 2. 
Between these two dates come Never too Late and Fran¬ 
cescos Fortunes. As for the Vision, it may belong anywhere 
from the latter half of 1590 on to 1592. 

In 1591 the Farewell to Follie was the only novel published. 
This pamphlet we have already discussed. 

On December 6,1591, Greene published A Maidens Dreame, 
his only extant poem which is not part of a work of fiction. 

One week later, December 13, were entered the first of the 
conny-catching pamphlets: 

Edward White and Thomas Nelson: Entred . . . The arte of Connye 
hatching. 

William Wright: Entred for his copie to be printed always for him 
by John Wolf The second parte of Connye hatching. 

The Thirde and last Part was entered February 7, 1592, 
by Thomas Scarlet, for Cutberd Burbie. The Defence of 
Conny-Catching was licensed April 21. A Disputation 
Betweene a Hee and a Shee Conny-Catcher dates from about 
this time, a little later perhaps. 

Philomela was licensed July 1, 1592. Greene says it was 
written earlier. 17 From its dissimilarity to the realistic 
pamphlets among which it appears, and from its striking 
likeness to some of the earlier work, the romance may be, no 
doubt, placed, as Dr. Wolff says, 18 with the 1584—7 group or 
with the Pandosto-Menaphon group of 1588-9. It is rather 
characteristic of Greene that in addition to his apology for 
publishing a love pamphlet after the promises made in the 
Mourning Garment and the Farewell to Follie, he should 
change his motto from the Omne tulit, which he used on 

17 “. . . which I had writen long since & kept charily.” Vol. XI., 
p. 109. 

18 Greek Romances, p. 405. 


CHRONOLOGY OF THE NON-DRAMATIC WORK 173 

similar romances, to the Sero sed serio of the prodigal-son 
romances. On July 20, A Quippe for an Upstart Courtier 
appeared. The Blacke Books Messenger , or the Life and 
Death of Ned Browne , was entered August 21. 

The last novel from Greene’s pen is the Groatsworth of Wit. 
When this was started there is no way of knowing. But 
the last part of it, surely, was written during Greene’s last 
days when the seriousness of his illness was making itself 
felt. It was not published until after his death, having 
been licensed on September 20, 1592. The earliest known 
edition is that of 1596. 

The last date we have to mention is October 6, when 
the Repentance appeared. 


CHAPTER VII 


THE PLAYS 

(A) The Chronology of the Plays 

There is no doubt that The Comical History of Alphonsus, 
King of Arragon, 1 is the earliest play that has come to us 
from Greene’s pen. Upon this fact scholars are agreed. 
In addition to the crudity of the play in regard to general 
style and mechanism, which show immaturity, there are 
Greene’s own lines in the Prologue, 

“And this my hand, which used for to pen 
The praise of love and Cupid's peerless power, 

Will now begin to treat of bloody Mars, 

Of doughty deeds and valiant victories," 2 

1 The earliest examplar “as it hath been sundrie times acted" was 
printed by Thomas Creede, 1599; this is the only one of Greene’s 
plays which has no motto. 

2 This passage in Greene’s prologue may be a challenge to Marlowe, 
or it may be an imitation of Marlowe’s prologue to Tamburlaine: 

“From jigging veins of rhyming mother wits, 

And such conceits as clownage keeps in play, 

We’ll lead you to the stately tent of war." 

Passages like Marlowe’s and Greene’s may, however, both be just 
following a fashion. Such passages were at least not unknown in 
poetry. In England’s Helicon (Ed. Bullen, p. 240) there is “An 
Heroical Poem” which contains these lines: 

“My wanton Muse that whilom wont to sing 
Fair beauty’s praise and Venus’ sweet delight, 

Of late had changed the tenor of her string 
To higher tunes than serve for Cupid’s fight. 

Shrill trumpet’s sound, sharp swords, and lances strong, 
War, blood, and death were matter of her song." 

174 


THE PLAYS 


175 


which have been taken to mean that in Alphonsus Greene 
turned from novels to plays, inspired to do so, it is further 
agreed, by the success of Tamburlaine. 

But though Alphonsus is recognized as his earliest dramatic 
production, the date at which Greene began to write plays 
has been - a matter of discussion. Especially so, since the 
appearance of the edition of Greene’s plays 3 by the late Mr. 
Churton Collins, who argued for a much later date than any 
hitherto proposed. 4 

Granting the relation between Alphonsus and Tamburlaine 
as that of copy and model, Mr. Collins, nevertheless, places 
Alphonsus as not earlier than 1591. Most important among 
his reasons for this date is the similarity between the pro¬ 
logue to Alphonsus and certain passages in Spenser’s Com¬ 
plaints (published 1591). In The Teares of the Muses , 
Spenser, through the mouth of Calliope, deplores the 
decay of poetry and the want of heroic themes. The 
Muse threatens eternal silence. Alphonsus as a hero satis¬ 
fies Calliope, according to Greene’s prologue, and she deter¬ 
mines to break her silence. Greene’s play is, therefore, a 
response to Spenser’s Complaints. Certain parallels of 

In the heroical poems of Daniel and Drayton there are indications 
of this same kind of ostentatious introduction. 

Recognition of the prevalence of such passages as that of Greene’s, 
while it casts a little doubt upon Greene’s challenge to Marlowe, does 
not alter the relation between the two plays; nor does it in any way 
lessen the probability that Alphonsus is Greene’s first play. 

3 The Plays and Poems of Robert Greene , Ed. with Introductions 
and Notes, by J. Churton Collins. Clarendon Press, 1905. 

4 The whole matter, it may be said, is very difficult. The problem 
of the dates — and the authorship, too — of Greene’s plays is perhaps 
unsolvable, and it is to be doubted whether anything more definite 
than approximations can be reached. To the discussions of dates and 
authorship I have little to add. What I say, largely by way of sum¬ 
mary, may be found in the writing of Gayley, Greg, Storojenko, and 
Collins. 


176 


ROBERT GREENE 


thought and diction bear out this same conclusion. Addi¬ 
tional reasons Mr. Collins finds as follows: In none of his 
works before 1591 does Greene mention his plays, although 
he mentions his novels; Nashe says nothing of Greene’s 
plays in the Preface to Menaphon (1589); nor do the com¬ 
mendatory verses to Menaphon (1589), to Perymedes (1588), 
to Alcida (1588), have any such references. The possible 
objection that, since Tamburlaine was produced as early as 
1587, 1591 would be a rather late date at which to be paro¬ 
dying it, is answered by the statement that Tamburlaine had 
continued to be popular upon the stage and that additional 
prominence had been given to it by its publication in 1590. 

Such are, briefly, Mr. Collins’ reasons for his choosing 
1591 as the date of Alphonsus. Mr. W. W. Greg, reviewing 
Collins’ work, 5 attacked the theory. Mr. Greg says that the 
question turns “upon the interpretation of an important but 
obscure passage in the Preface to Perymedes ”, dated 1588: 

“I keepe my old course, to palter up some thing in Prose, using 
mine old poesie still, Omne tulit punctum, although latelye two Gentle¬ 
men Poets made two mad men of Rome beate it out of their paper 
bucklers: & had it in derision, for that I could not make my verses 
jet it upon the stage in tragicall buskins, everie worde filling the mouth 
like the faburden of Bo-Bell, daring God out of heaven with that 
Atheist Tamburlan, or blaspheming with the mad preest of the sonne.” 6 

The full meaning of Greene’s words cannot be known, but 
two interpretations may be given to the passage as a whole. 
One is to the effect that Greene is taunted for not having 
written plays; the other, to the effect that he has done so 
and failed. Collins, arguing for a late date for Alphonsus , 
believes the latter to be the more sensible interpretation. 
Greg agrees. 7 But he would place Alphonsus immediately 

6 Modern Language Review, Vol. I. 6 Vol. VII., p. 8. 

7 This is the interpretation given by Mr. Gayley also. ( Repre¬ 
sentative English Comedies. Vol. I., p. 403.) 



THE PLAYS 


177 


after Tamburlaine, not later than 1588. As for the simi¬ 
larities to Spenser, Mr. Greg considers them of little worth. 
“Supposing the parallels to have the least force, which it is 
difficult to grant, nothing follows, since, as Professor Collins 
himself admits, the poems in question circulated in MS. for 
several years before they issued from the press.” 8 

In addition to his refutation of Collins’ statements, Greg 
brings forward another argument for the year 1587. It is 
this. Delphrigus and the King of the Fairies are men¬ 
tioned as famous parts by the player who in Groatsworth 
of Wit induced Roberto to become a maker of plays. The 
detail in Groatsworth of Wit is, Mr. Greg thinks, a personal 
recollection, and indicates that these plays were popular 
when Greene began to write plays. Now Nashe, in the 
Preface to Menaphon speaks of the “company of taffety 
fools” who “might have antickt it untill this time up and 
downe the countrey with the King of Fairies, and dined 
every day at the pease porredge ordinary with Delphrigus.” 
The plays, that is, were old in 1589. Hence Greg con¬ 
cludes, in 1587 — immediately after the success of Tambur¬ 
laine — Greene wrote his Alphonsus. 

On account of the closeness of the relationship between 
Alphonsus and Marlowe’s play, 1587 or 1588 has been 
accepted by Fleay, Storojenko, Dickinson, Gayley, and 
Greg. Against the belief of these men, the argument of 
Professor Collins for a later date seems unconvincing. 

Greene’s second play, it is almost generally believed, was 
A Looking Glasse for London and Englande. This play 
Gayley assigns to 1587. Storojenko and Grosart place it 
late in 1588 or early in 1589. Collins puts it in 1590 or 
1591, as a part of Greene’s “repentant” work. The state¬ 
ment of Collins, in view of what has been said in an earlier 
chapter regarding Greene’s repentance, need not detain us 
8 Mod. Lang. Rev. Yol. I., p. 244. 


178 


ROBERT GREENE 


here. As for the others, they agree that 1589 may be safely 
considered as the latest possible date, on account of a pas¬ 
sage at the end of Lodge’s Scillaes Metamorphosis , 

“To write no more of that whence shame doth grow, 

Or tie my pen to penny-knaves delight, 

But live with fame and so for fame to write.” 9 

I can see no particular force to the argument. In the 
first place, inasmuch as the lines occur at the end of a poem 
and not of a play, I cannot see that Lodge is referring to plays 
particularly and not to all kinds of writing for penny-knaves’ 
delight. In the second place Lodge is not to be taken too 
seriously. His statement is nothing more than the con¬ 
ventional apology for the “trifle” therewith presented. 10 
As for 1589, however, it is likely that the Looking Glasse 
was written before that date. 

About 1588 Lodge sailed with Captain Clarke to Tercera 
and the Canaries. He wrote some commendatory verses for 
Greene’s Spanish Masquerado (licensed February 1,1589), and 
published his own Scillaes Metamorphosis on September 22. 
He and Greene may have collaborated during the summer, after 
Lodge’s return. But Gayley’s point is well taken that, since 
the play contains no reference to the Armada (and such a 
play might very naturally contain such references), Lodge 
and Greene produced it before Lodge left England in 1588. 
It does not seem necessary, however, to put the date as 
early as Gayley does, — June, 1587, the time when Spain and 
the Pope joined forces in a treaty. 

The Looking Glasse was printed for Thomas Creede in 1594, 
having been entered on the Stationers’ Registers on March 5 
of that year. This play is mentioned in Henslowe’s Diary 

9 Lodge’s works, Hunterian Club. Mr. Gosse inclines to place this 
poem as early as 1585 or 1586. 

10 Similar to the utterances of Gascoigne and of Greene himself. 


THE PLAYS 


179 


among the performances of 1592: March 8, March 27, April 
19, and June 7. 

The earliest impression of Orlando Furioso, “as it was 
playd before the Queenes Maiestie,” was published in 1594, 
having been entered on December 7, 1593. The Queen’s 
players left the court on December 26, 1591. The play 
must have been written before that date. Orlando was 
already an old play when it was performed in Henslowe’s 
theater by the Admiral’s and Lord Strange’s men on 
February 21, 1592. If there is any truth in the passage in 
the Defence of Conny-Catching, “you sold Orland Fourioso 
to the Queens players for twenty nobles, and when they 
were in the country, sold the same play to Lord Admirals 
men, for as much more,” it would indicate that the play 
had been resold early in 1592, and that it had belonged to 
the Queen’s company until December 26, 1591. 

It is very likely that December 26, 1591, marks the latest 
date for composition. A passage within the play 11 sets July 
30,1588, as the earliest. This passage, as Prof. Gay ley says, 12 
is historically minute, referring to the departure of the 
Armada from Lisbon; it does not “savour of afterthought 
or actor’s clap-trap,” and it agrees with a later passage in 
the play which has to do with Orlando’s defense of Angelica 
(lines 1485-6), 

“Yet for I see my Princesse is abusde, 

By new-come straglers from a forren coast.” 

That the play was written after the defeat of the Armada 
seems clear. 

11 Lines 82-85: Scene I. 

“And what I dare, let say the Portingale, 

And Spaniard tell, who, mann’d with mighty fleets, 

Came to subdue my islands to their kings, 

Filling our seas with stately argosies.” 

12 Rep. Eng. Com. p. 408. 


180 


ROBERT GREENE 


Between July 30,1588, and December 28,1591, the Queen’s 
company acted at court ten times. 13 The performance of 
February 9, 1589 (being assigned also to the Admiral’s men), 
is open to question, which leaves December 26, 1588, as the 
only date within the year that followed the Spanish defeat. 
This is a probable date for the performance, for references 
to the Armada would be likely to occur in a play to be per¬ 
formed at court at such a time. There may be further 
ground for thinking that Orlando was acted before the 
spring of 1589 in that Peele may be alluding to Orlando 
in his Farewell, 1 * written that year. 

The Honorable Historie of frier Bacon and frier Bong ay, 
according to Gay ley, 15 dates from the end of 1589 or the 
beginning of 1590, sometime within a year after the produc¬ 
tion of Dr. Faustus. The play is the first entered in Hens- 
lowe’s Diary, under the date February 19, 1592. It was 
not then a new play. 

The play of Faire Em is of considerable importance in 
the problem of dating Friar Bacon. Faire Em is obviously 
imitation of Greene’s play. Greene reproaches its author 16 
for having consumed “a whole yeare” in the process of 
writing. Whatever “a whole yeare” may mean, Friar 
Bacon precedes Faire Em by several months at least. 

Professor Gayley dates Faire Em 1590. It very likely 
followed the fresh editions of Yver’s Printemps d’lver (the 
source) in 1588 and ’89. It was written between November 2, 

13 1588, Dec. 26; 1589, Feb. 9 (?), Dec. 26; 1590, Mar. 1, Dec. 26; 
1591, Jan, 1, 3, 6, Feb. 14, Dec. 26. (Fleay, Hist, of Stage, pp. 76-80.) 

14 See Collier, Memoirs of Alleyn; Fleay, Life of Shakespeare, 
p. 96; Gayley, Rep. Eng. Comedies , p. 409. 

15 Rep. Eng. Comedies, p. 411. 

18 O, tis a jollie matter when a man hath a familiar stile and can 
endite a whole yeare and never be beholding to art? but to bring 
Scripture to prove anything he says — is no small piece of cunning.” 
(Vol. IX., p. 233.) 


THE PLAYS 


181 


1590, and the middle of 1591,— between the preface to 
Greene’s Mourning Garment, which has only general refer¬ 
ences to those who may reject his repentance, and the 
preface to Farewell to Follie, which contains the specific 
reference to the author of Faire Em. A year preceding 
would place Friar Bacon in the second half of 1589 or very 
early in 1590. 

Mr. Fleay 17 brings forward another argument to indicate 
1589 as the date of Friar Bacon. Inasmuch as playwrights 
using dates in their plays always, Mr. Fleay says, used the 
almanac of the current year; and inasmuch as 1589 is the 
only possible year which fulfils these conditions, the earliest 
possible date is thus determined. 

Collins, it should be said, believes that Friar Bacon fol¬ 
lowed, rather than preceded Faire Em, believing that 
Greene’s play is an imitation of the anonymous one. He 
assigns it, therefore, to the end of 1591 or the beginning 
of 1592. 

The last of Greene’s undoubted plays is James IV. This 
play was entered on the Stationers’ Registers on May 14, 
1594, but no copy earlier than that of 1598 is known. As to 
the date of its composition, Mr. Collins has nothing to say, 
further than that it is among Greene’s latest’ dramatic 
work. 

It is probable that James IV. dates from the end of 1590 
or the beginning of 1591, following upon the line of develop¬ 
ment started in Friar Bacon. Mr. Gayley makes consid¬ 
erable of what he thinks is a definite relationship between 
Dorothea’s song in James IV. (Act I., lines 270-9) and 
some lines in Peele’s Hunting of Cupid, which he dates as 
1590. In the resemblance of Dorothea’s song to Greene’s 
lines and in the further resemblance to Greene’s own song in 
Mourning Garment (November 2, 1590) I can see no argument 
17 In Ward’s O. E. D., cxliii-cxliv. 


182 


ROBERT GREENE 


of weight. “Ah, what is love?” was too common a theme 
to make reasoning upon its occurrence at all stable. There 
seems to be more foundation to Gayley’s statements that the 
boast of Dorothea, 

“Shall never Frenchman say an English maid 
Of threats of forraine force will be afraid,” 

contains a reference to Elizabeth’s landing of troops in 
France in 1590 and 1591; and that the reference to the 
Irish wars may have come from the contemporary troubles 
in Fermanagh. On the whole, the conclusion that the play 
was presented at court on December 26, 1590, is not bad. 

The conclusions stated above are by no means certain. 
Long years ago Dyce prophesied that it would be impos¬ 
sible to determine with exactness the date of any one of 
Greene’s plays. Since Dyce’s time, not enough definite 
information has been secured to prevent the fulfilment of 
the prophecy. To date Alphonsus 1587 or 1588; Looking 
Glasse the same years (more likely, 1588); Orlando 1588, 
December 26; Friar Bacon, 1589 or 1590; James IV., 1590, 
December 26, — is to come as near the truth, however, as, 
at present, is possible. 

(B) Attributions to Greene 

Aside from the problems of dates, the student of Greene’s 
plays is confronted by the further problem of determina¬ 
tions of authorship. With this problem, as with the other, I 
shall endeavor to state briefly what arguments have 
been advanced. 

Of the numerous plays which have at times been assigned 
to Greene it is necessary to mention the following: First 
and Second Parts of Henry VI., The Pinner of Wakefield, 
Selimus, and A Knack to Know a Knave. With regard to 


THE PLAYS 


183 


the Henry VI. plays the long-standing attribution of a share 
to Greene by Miss Lee 18 has been argued to be without 
foundation by the author of a recent discussion of the 
Henry VI. problem. 19 A Knack to Know a Knave has been 
proposed by Professor Gayley, 20 following a suggestion of 
Simpson, &s a solution for the puzzling passage in Greene’s 
Groatsworth of Wit. Greene, writing to Marlowe, says, 
“With thee I joyne young Juvenall, that by ting satirist, 
that lastly with mee together writ a comedie.” The identi¬ 
fication of “young Juvenall” and of the “Comedie” has, 
caused much discussion, into the merits of which it is not 
necessary to enter. 21 

Opposed to the theory favoring Lodge and the Looking 
Glasse, Professor Gayley believes that Nashe and a Knack 
to Know a Knave better fit the problem. With the exception 
of Collins, who somewhat arbitrarily favors Lodge, opinion 
has come to rest largely upon Nashe. But Gayley is alone 
in his proposed solution of the “comedie” in which Greene 
says he had a share. His argument is that the subject is 
not foreign to Nashe, that certain characters resemble two 
others in Summer’s Last Will , that Greene had been engaged 

18 Miss Jane Lee. The New Shakespeare Society Transactions. 
1875-6, p. 219. “On the Authorship of the Second and Third Parts 
of Henry VI. and their Originals.” 

19 C. F. Tucker Brooke. “The Authorship of 2 and 3 Henry VI.” 
The main points to Mr. Brooke’s discussion are as follows: 

1. The approach of the subject from the side of Shakespeare 
cannot yield results. 

2. Marlowe is the author of the Contention and the True 
Tragedy. 

3. Neither Greene nor Peele had any connection with the 
plays. 

4. Shakespeare revised Contention and True Tragedy, deep¬ 
ening the characters and changing many passages and lines. 

20 Rep. Eng. Comedies. Vol. I., pp. 422-6. 

21 A good summary may be found in McKerrow’s Edition of Nashe. 


184 


ROBERT GREENE 


in knave pamphlets, that it has certain parallels to Friar 
Bacon, that it is called a “comedie” while no authenticated 
play of Greene’s is so called, that its date is in accord with 
Greene’s statement, and that it was played by a company 
then acting three of Greene’s known dramas. All these 
points are suggestive, even though not conclusive. 

The remaining two, Selimus and George-a-Greene, have 
more importance in this question of authorship. Dr. 
Grosart first “reclaimed” Selimus for Greene and included 
it among Greene’s plays. This he did on the basis of ex¬ 
ternal and internal evidence. The external evidence con¬ 
sists in the fact that two passages from Selimus — on Delaie 
and Damocles — are attributed to Greene by Robert Allott 
in England’s Parnassus (1600),— a collection of quotations 
from the then extant poetry of England. The internal 
evidence has to do with the resemblance between certain 
lines in Selimus and Greene’s song, “Sweet are the thoughts 
that savour of content”; with the fact that Greene promised 
a second part to Alphonsus, for which, in view of the failure 
of Alphonsus, Greene substituted Selimus; and finally that 
there are many resemblances between Alphonsus and 
Selimus. 

The most earnest upholder of Dr. Grosart is Mr. Hugo Gil¬ 
bert, whose dissertation^ argues strongly for Greene’s author¬ 
ship of Selimus. Gilbert believes in Allott’s trustworthiness 
in Englands Parnassus, in which he finds six passages from 
Selimus — an increase over Dr. Grosart’s two. Mr. Gilbert 
finds what he thinks are certain resemblances between the 
character of Bullithrumble in Selimus to the clowns in 
Greene’s authenticated plays. He sees in Selimus the same 
praise of country life that is to be found in some of Greene’s 
works. The natural history allusions, the archaisms, the 

22 Robert Greene’s Selimus. Eine Litterarhistorische Untersuchung. 
Kiel, 1899. 


THE PLAYS 


185 


Machiavellian doctrine, the proper names, all occur in 
Greene’s acknowledged work, and so all prove Greene’s 
authorship of Selimus. 

Gilbert pointed out that the source of Selimus is to be 
found in Paulus Jovius’ “Rerum Turcicarum commentarius 
ad Invictissimum Caesarem Carolum V. Imperatorem 
Augustum”; and he cites as proof that Greene knew Paulus 
Jovius passages in Farewell to Follie (p. 337) and Royal 
Exchange (p. 254). Professor Hart corrects Mr. Gilbert by 
showing that Greene got his plot for Selimus not from 
Paulus Jovius directly, but indirectly from Primaudaye’s 
Academy P The belief that Selimus was written about 1587, 
and the fact that then was a time when Greene was borrow¬ 
ing very extensively from Primaudaye, especially in the 
Farewell to Follie , Professor Hart regards as proof of 
Greene’s authorship. 

Having set down the arguments advanced for Greene’s 
authorship of this play, I now give those against it. The 
first is that of Dr. Wolff, 24 who doubts Greene’s authorship 
on the ground of the characterization. This matter he thinks 
would alone be decisive, for Selimus, Acomat, Corcut, 
Bajazet, are characters so well rounded and individual as 
to seem beyond Greene’s power. 

Professor Gayley declines to think Greene the author of 
Selimus. Allott, he says, is not trustworthy, for he assigns 
to Greene passages which do not belong to him — two, for 
instance, which belong to Spenser. Professor Gayley fails 
to see in Selimus any traces of Greene’s diction, sentiment, 
poetic quality, or rhythmical form. As a suggestion, he 
proposes Lodge’s name in connection with Selimus , on the 
grounds of relationship to Civill War and Mucedorus. 

23 Chap. LIX., p. 642. “Of the Education of a Prince in Good 
Manners and Condicions.” 

24 Eng. Stud., Vol. 37, p. 359, note. 


186 


ROBERT GREENE 


Collins does not print Selimus in his edition of Greene, 
inasmuch as he finds Grosart’s arguments unsatisfactory. 

The latest word on the subject is that in the Cambridge 
History of English Literature, 25 of which the material is taken 
from an unpublished article by Mr. F. G. Hubbard. Mr. 
Hubbard pointed out (l) that the comic scene in Locrine 
which is paralleled in Selimus stands alone in the latter play, 
while in Locrine there is much low humor of the same kind 
in connection with the same characters; (2) that Locrine pre¬ 
ceded Selimus because Locrine has many lines from Spenser’s 
Complaints not found in Selimus; but that with one possible 
exception, Selimus has nothing from the Complaints not to 
be found in Locrine; (3) that, moreover, one of these bor¬ 
rowed lines in Selimus is followed by five other lines not in 
the Complaints but in Locrine; that Locrine and Selimus 
are not by the same man, since Selimus has borrowings 
from the Faerie Queene while Locrine has none [Collins 
believed that Locrine and Selimus were written by the 
same man]; (5) that Locrine was not completed before 

1591, when the Complaints were published [As a matter of 
fact the Complaints circulated widely before their publica¬ 
tion]; (6) that a line near the end of Act V., “One mischief 
follows on another’s neck,” is apparently copied from Tan - 
cred and Gismond (published 1591, with preface dated August 
8) — a line not given in the earlier MS. version of the play; 
(7) that since Selimus is later than Locrine (which is later 
than August 8, 1591), and since Greene died September 3, 

1592, the issue of Greene’s authorship is brought within 
narrow limits. 

Such at length are the arguments for and against the 
attribution of Selimus to Greene. The only conclusion which 
can be justified, so far as I can see, is that the problem has 
not been, probably cannot be, settled. 

25 Yol. V., p. 96. 


THE PLAYS 


187 


With regard to George-a-Greene, which has been included 
among Greene’s plays by Dyce, Grosart, Collins, and Dick¬ 
inson, the problem is quite as complex as that of Selimus. 
No one of these men is satisfied with the grounds on which 
he included the play, but no one is quite content to leave 
the play'out. It may be well to state the situation. 

On the title-page of the 1599 edition are the following 
manuscript notes: 

Written by ... a minister who acted the piners pt in it himselfe. 
Teste W. Shakespeare. 

Ed. Juby saith that the play was made be Ro. Greene. 

These notes were made by different persons. The hand¬ 
writing is of the style of the Elizabethan age. Upon the 
value of these memoranda the validity of the ascription of 
the play to Greene partly depends. And it can be said at 
once that, so far as that validity is concerned, all scholars are 
agreed that the notes are of decidedly questionable worth. 
In the first place it can only be assumed that they are the 
notes of contemporaries; and in the second place it can only 
be assumed that they are genuine. As Mr. Greg says, 
no one can judge without examining the original notes, and 
without being familiar with the Ireland and Collier forgeries. 26 

The attribution of George-a-Greene to Greene on the basis 
of the notes is, therefore, made on very slender evidence. 

The other basis for belief or disbelief in Greene’s author¬ 
ship has been found within the play itself. The internal 
evidence has been variously interpreted. Mertins 27 thought 
the play was not by Greene. It lacks, Mertins says, the 
pompous style and classical references, the imaginative ele¬ 
ments, the poetical diction, the Latin, French, and Italian 
phrasing, the unusual word compounds, the ornate epithets, 

26 See Appendix II., where these notes enter into the discussion of 
whether or not Greene was at one time a minister. 

27 Robert Greene and the Play of George-a-Greene. Breslau, 1885. 


188 


ROBERT GREENE 


so common in Greene's other plays. The grammatical 
forms are different from Greene's; the meter is unlike 
that of Greene's plays; as for the similarity between George- 
a-Greene and Friar Bacon , that may be due merely to the 
similarity in material. 

To most of Mertins’ objections, Professor Collins agrees. 
Yet he believes the play to be Greene's, and he includes 
it in the edition of Greene's works. The play is built, he 
says, as Greene built plays; the types of character are like 
Greene’s; there are similarities between this play and Friar 
Bacon and James IV. And so Professor Collins, “ though 
the evidence ... is far from conclusive,” thinks the play 
should be given to Greene because “ there is no dramatist 
of those days known to us to whom it could_.be assigned 
with more probability.” 

Professor Gayley 28 is non-committal. He finds in George- 
a-Greene the skilful plot, the popular material, such as 
Greene used in Friar Bacon. And he finds here and there a 
rhetorical style like Greene’s. But he does not find “the 
curious imagery, the precious visualizing, the necromantic 
monstrous toys,” nor the “conscious affectation of uncon¬ 
scious art.” The conversations, while sometimes like 
Greene's, are not on the whole equal to his “humorous 
indirection and his craft.” 

Thus the matter stands. 

Henslowe records five performances of the play between 
December 29, 1593, and January 22, 1594. But the first 
entry is not marked as that of a new play. The title-page 
states that the play had been acted by the Sussex company, 
a company which is not known to have acted at that time any 
of Greene's unquestioned plays, although the Sussex men 
soon afterwards joined Greene's company in the production 
of Friar Bacon. 


Rep. Eng. Com. p. 418. 


THE PLAYS 


189 


George-a-Greene was entered to Cuthbert Burbie on April 1, 
1595. The earliest known copy is that in the library of the 
Duke of Devonshire, dated 1599, and uniform as to printer, 
publisher, year, vignette, and motto with Orlando Furioso. 

As to date, nothing is known. If the play is by Greene, 
it belongs undoubtedly just before or just after James IV. 
The only indication of date within the play is that in line 
42 the Earl of Kendal says, 

“Lest I, like martial Tamburlaine, lay waste 
Their bordering countries.” 

(C) Greene as a Dramatist 

It was following fashion which turned Greene to the writ¬ 
ing of plays. Just as the popularity of Euphues started him 
off on the production of Mamillia, and as Daphnis and Chloe 
gave the impulse for Menaphon with its pastoralism, so the 
great success of Tamburlaine w T as sufficient to focus Greene’s 
attention. 

Before the day of Marlowe and Kyd, great progress had 
been made in both tragedy and comedy; but the evolution, 
even after the building of the theaters, had been gradual. 
With the exception of Lyly no man stands out in sharp dis¬ 
tinction from his fellows as having made this or another 
contribution to the art of play-writing. The plays written 
before 1585, for the most part, gave an impression of their 
impersonality. Not that they were authorless, but that 
they are today significant more as types and as mani¬ 
festations of varied dramatic interests than as products 
of individual men possessed of individual personalities. 
It is not remarkable, therefore, that Greene, busy with 
the exploitation of prose narrative, and engrossed in the 
discovery of his own powers in the writing of fiction, and 
eager in his inculcation of new standards of refinement, 


190 


ROBERT GREENE 


should not have turned to the writing of plays before he did. 
Nor is it remarkable that he turned when he did. How¬ 
ever closely engaged in one kind of activity, Greene was 
never so indifferent to contemporary literary movements 
as not to be aware at once of the entrance of a new force 
within the sphere of popular favor. And so it was that 
the plays of Kyd and Marlowe at once caught his eye. 

It has often been remarked that Greene’s plays fall into 
two distinct classes, his failures and his successes. The 
explication of this one fact involves what is essential to an 
understanding of Greene as a dramatist. There is Alphonsus, 
which attempts the bloody deeds of Mars; and there is 
Friar Bacon, which invites refreshing drinks of milk in the 
dairy-house at Fressingfield. Both classes spring from very 
definite qualities of Greene’s mind; and both are of necessity 
what they are. 

Greene’s first play was a direct outgrowth from Tambur- 
laine. Because of that fact, it was a failure. Tamburlaine 
is essentially a play dependent upon the character of its hero 
to sustain interest. The march of events, as the Scythian 
shepherd advances to his kingship of the world — conquest 
following conquest, — has no dramatic interest in itself as 
compared with the interest with which we behold the revela¬ 
tion of character which those events show. The action of 
Tamburlaine, lacking in complexity and in unity, forms only 
a succession of gorgeous scenes bound together by a unity of 
characterization, and supported by the power of the im¬ 
agination with which the hero is conceived. Indomitable 
ambition, unflinching will, unlimited self-confidence working 
themselves out to their desired end constitute the theme of 
the play, and give English literature the great prototype of 
Richard III., Macbeth, and Milton’s Satan. Tamburlaine 
is a tremendous personality swept on by his lust for power. 
In his greatness, he is a hard character to imitate. 


THE PLAYS 


191 


Another characteristic of Marlowe’s play made it dis¬ 
tinctive. Abandoning rhyme, Marlowe chose blank verse, 
and in so doing was free to let his fancy run. He was able 
to infuse into the verse of the play something of the spirit 
of his protagonist. Thus form and matter harmonized, and 
combined to make the effect, the Marlowesque, full of 
vaunting thoughts proclaimed through sonorous and high- 
sounding language. The sublimity of Tamburlaine gave it 
power, — the power which Greene felt, but could not copy. 

Alphonsus — whether Alphonsus V., king of Aragon, 
Sicily, and Naples (died 1454) or Alphonsus I., king of Ara¬ 
gon and Navarre (died 1134), is not quite clear — is Tambur¬ 
laine emasculated. So far as the arrangement of scenes is 
concerned, Greene’s play is as good as Marlowe’s. We learn 
of the young man’s plans to regain his father’s throne, of 
the successive steps in the realization of ambition, of 
Amurack’s opposition to the conquest, of Alphonsus’ fall¬ 
ing in love with the Sultan’s daughter. Throughout the 
play, incident follows incident naturally and effectively. 
The trouble with the play is not in the development of the 
action. It is rather in the fact that Greene was not able 
to grasp the conception of the forceful personality necessary 
to the success of a play which depended so largely upon that 
conception of character. The abundance of strength, the 
buoyancy of spirit, with which Tamburlaine compels interest, 
were not in Greene’s power to portray. Tamburlaine was 
the very worst model Greene could have chosen. 

The weakness of Alphonsus is very apparent. The line 
of action, though developing naturally, falls into two parts. 
There is, in reality, the play of Alphonsus, followed by the 
play of Amurack the Turk. The lack of unity in action 
results in lack of unity of character. Alphonsus, nominally 
the hero, shares his prominence with his opponent. Indeed 
Amurack is given the more prominence. He has the same 


192 


ROBERT GREENE 


elements which Alphonsus has; and in addition he is en¬ 
grossed in his troubles with his wife and daughter, and he 
is involved in various kinds of magic incantations which 
give a clap-trap interest to his career. 

But the lack of unity in Alphonsus is of no great conse¬ 
quence in view of the play’s failure to convince. Even the 
faintness and the inconsistencies of characterization are ab¬ 
sorbed in this fundamental defect. Marlowe’s Tamburlaine 
gathers momentum as it goes, a huge ball rolling faster and 
faster, moved by an invisible force within. Alphonsus 
gathers no momentum at all. Always it is Greene, behind, 
pushing with all his might, and laboriously trying to move 
an immovable weight. He makes much noise, and you 
would think his exertions effective if it were not that the 
ball is ever in the^same place. 

Greene’s imagination could not encompass intense char¬ 
acter. Neither could his poetic fancy attain the necessary 
height. Nowhere in the play is there a passage which so 
combines poetry and passion as any random passage in the 
work of Marlowe. 

“Slash off his head! as though Albinius’ head 
Were then so easy to be slashed off: 

In faith, sir, no; when you are dead and gone, 

I hope to flourish like the pleasant spring.” 

Act II., Sc. 2. 

“As for this carping girl, Iphigena, 

Take her with thee to bear thee company, 

And in my land I rede be seen no more, 

For if you do, you both shall die therefore.” 

Act II., Sc. 2. 

“Pagan, I say thou greatly art deceiv’d: 

I clap up fortune in a cage of gold, 

To make her turn her wheel as I think best; 

And as for Mars whom you do say will change, 

He moping sits behind the kitchen-door, 

Prest at command of every scullion’s mouth, 


THE PLAYS 


193 


Who dares not stir, nor once to move a whit, 

For fear Alphonsus then should stomach it.” 

Act IV., Sc. 3. 

Some critics have said that Alphonsus is not an imita¬ 
tion at all — that it was not meant as imitation, but as 
parody. " Marlowe had had one hero. Greene would have 
two. Tamburlaine had met with no opposition. In the 
parody, let there be two conquering boastful heroes bump¬ 
ing their heads together and endeavoring to beat each other’s 
brains out. Or, say, it would be as if one should turn from 
admiring a fine specimen of a cock, alone in his splendor, 
to the spectacle of that same fowl with bloody head and 
ruffled feathers, engaged in the most ridiculous of contests,— 
a rooster fight. 

I do not believe that Alphonsus is a parody. A parody 
is either humorous or satirical. Now Alphonsus is not obvi¬ 
ously humorous. And it is not satirical. To interpret it 
as such is to misunderstand Greene. Even the Quippe for 
an Upstart Courtier is not satirical, abundant as its possi¬ 
bilities for satire are. Alphonsus is a bad play, but not 
because it is poor satire. There is a better explanation. 

Experimenter though he was, Greene was no critic. He 
seems never to have learned what he could not do. In the 
mass of his work there is good and bad mingled all together. 
When Greene took up his pen it was with no discrimination. 
His instinct, not his judgment, is to thank for what is good. 
His misdirected effort is to blame for what is bad. Alphonsus 
was the outcome of misapplied energy. There was no par¬ 
ody about it. Tamburlaine was popular. Greene, with the 
impulse derived from his ever wishing to follow a leader, 
attempted a play of the same kind,— and produced one of 
the worst of the many bad Elizabethan dramas. 

Orlando Furioso is the dramatization of the incident in 
Ariosto’s Romance in which Orlando goes mad through love 


194 


ROBERT GREENE 


of Angelica and through jealousy of his supposedly success¬ 
ful rival. At the palace of Marsilius, emperor of Africa, 
various suitors are urging their suit for the hand of Angelica. 
Orlando is successful. Sacripant desires Angelica and plots 
to secure her. He bids his servant carve the names of 
Angelica and Medor on the trees. Orlando, believing the 
treachery of Angelica, goes mad, and creates the famous 
scenes of entering upon the stage “with a leg on his neck” 
and of ranging through the woods saying “Woods, trees, 
leaves; leaves, trees, woods.” Angelica is banished for her 
supposed unfaithfulness. In the woods she meets Orlando, 
who does not recognize her. After a time Melissa, an 
enchantress, restores Orlando’s wits. There is much fighting 
—“they fight a good while, and then breathe,”—Angelica 
is restored to her home, and everything ends well. 

This play has been interpreted as a parody on The Spanish 
Tragedy. Greene, it is said, was satirizing the use of mad¬ 
ness on the stage, an element in the drama made very popu¬ 
lar by Kyd’s play. The mad Orlando wandering through 
the forest is a burlesque on the raving Hieronimo. And 
“woods, trees, leaves” is only ridicule of the Grand Mar¬ 
shal’s discovery of his dead son’s body, and other similar 
scenes. 

Orlando is universally regarded as a poor play; some are 
inclined to regard its badness as intentional. I do not 
agree to any interpretation which regards the play as a 
parody. I think that it is a failure; and a failure for the 
same reason that Alphonsus is. To portray insanity well 
on the stage is a great imaginative achievement, as King 
Lear proves. The imagination required is of a different kind, 
from that required to produce Tamhurlaine. Less sweeping 
but none the less intense. Intensity, keen insight — without 
his being aware of the deficiency — were what Greene lacked. 
Orlando Furioso is an imitation just as Alphonsus is. Both 



THE PLAYS 


195 


plays were meant to be heroic. Both are unpardonable fail¬ 
ures. It is hard upon Greene to say so. But there is no 
justice in trying to excuse failure under the name of parody. 
Better to say at once that Greene was trying to do what he 
could not do. 

Friar Bacon was written in emulation of Dr. Faustus. 
The play is both a failure and a success. Inevitably so: 
it is a combination of two elements. There is the story of 
Bacon and the brazen head which he had constructed — 
how he had pursued learning and had become a powerful 
magician, how he had made the head which should enable 
him to encircle England with a wall of brass, how Miles, the 
dull servant, was set to watch, how the devil came and 
marred all. There is also the story of Margaret, the maid 
of Fressingfield, with whom Prince Edward fell in love but 
whom he relinquished in favor of his friend who had been 
sent to woo for him. This second story is a development 
of the hint in the old Friar Bacon ballad of the maid who 
had two suitors, and who preferred the lowly one to the one 
of high degree. 

With regard to Friar Bacon himself, Greene was endeav¬ 
oring to copy the figure of Faustus, all-wise, all-powerful 
magician. He did not succeed. There is nothing sublime 
about Bacon, nothing dignified. His sorcery is nothing but 
clap-trap; his contests with Vandermast only stage show, 
poor spectacle at that. Even the brazen head, as manifes¬ 
tation of Bacon’s power, is foolish, however much a source 
of comedy it may be when seen through the eyes of Miles. 
Friar Bacon bears the same relation to Dr. Faustus that 
Alphonsus bears to Tamburlaine. Friar Bacon, Alphonsus, 
Orlando, all demand greatness of imagination; and Greene 
had no greatness to bestow. All three are, therefore, not 
so much characters which are true but only faintly por¬ 
trayed, as they are mechanical figures poorly constructed. 


196 


ROBERT GREENE 


If Friar Bacon were just a play with a conjurer as hero 
(as Greene meant it to be), it would belong with Alphonsus 
and Orlando among the things that would better not have 
been. It is, however, successful. Greene found in the old 
ballad upon which he based his play the hint of a story 
which he developed. It is this story, originally incidental, 
which differentiates Friar Bacon from the plays that had 
preceded it. For the story and the character of Margaret 
and her lover predominate over the story and character of 
Friar Bacon. In the success of the love story, and in the 
fusing of it with the story of Bacon, the weakness of the 
magician is unheeded. 

Emphasizing the love story as he did, Greene became for 
the first time original in the drama. Marlowe had been 
his model in the earlier plays, and Marlowe had provided 
the starting-point for Friar Bacon. But Friar Bacon — the 
Friar Bacon we remember — belongs to Greene alone. For 
the very reason that there is nothing of Marlowe in it, it is 
in a new class. Greene could not copy Marlowe, but he 
could write plays of his own, plays distinctively his own. 

James IV. is a continuation of the work begun in Friar 
Bacon. It is a dramatization of a tale in Cinthio’s Heca- 
tommithi (3:1), made with considerable skill and some 
changes from the source. 29 James IV. of Scotland is mar¬ 
ried to Dorothea, the daughter of the king of England. He 
immediately confesses his love for the Countess Ida, a 
confession overheard by Ateukin. Ateukin devises plots. 

29 The greatest change is in the opening of the play. The long 
process of the development of the false love is dispensed with, and in 
the opening of the play James is shown to be in love with Ida at the 
time of his marriage with Dorothea. In the play Ateukin overhears 
the king’s statement of love rather than hears of it, through some one 
else as in the novel. Greene’s changes, on the whole, make for con¬ 
densation and dramatic effectiveness. 


THE PLAYS 


197 


Dorothea is at length persuaded of her husband’s faith¬ 
lessness and flees in disguise, accompanied by her dwarf, 
Nano. James hires an assassin who attempts to put Doro¬ 
thea to death. The king of England arrives with an army. 
James is defeated. Dorothea comes from her disguise. 
James is sorry for his misdeeds and everything ends happily. 
This play, too, is free from the influence of Marlowe, and 
like Friar Bacon it is successful. 

Failure and success, then, were Greene’s results. The 
cause for the failure has been shown to be Greene’s lack 
of an intense imagination and of an elevation of style which 
could enable him to follow the model created by Marlowe. 
It remains to analyze the cause of Greene’s success in the 
plays in which he displayed his originality. 

A study of Greene as a dramatist is analogous to a study 
of him as a novelist. Alphonsus and Orlando Furioso corre¬ 
spond to the tales of Valdracko and Arbasto; Friar Bacon 
and James IV. correspond to Menaphon and Pandosto — 
the former failures, and the latter successes. The qualities 
which make Friar Bacon and James IV. good plays are, 
therefore, the same qualities which make Menaphon and 
Pandosto good novels. The success in all cases is due to 
the charm with which the story is told. 

Whether in novel or in play, when Greene had a theme 
centering around a heroine rather than around a hero, he 
was at his best. Greene was not effeminate. But he did 
have a delicacy about him, a refinement, which somehow was 
displayed in two charming ways. In the first place, his 
imagination when dealing with women characters was able 
to bring forth creatures for whom his reader can feel genuine 
interest and sympathy. I do not mean that Greene created 
great women characters; but he did create wholesome 
women. In the second place, Greene could blow through 
his pages the freshness of the out-of-doors. 


198 


ROBERT GREENE 


Medea, Iphigena, Melissa, Angelica, all these are worth¬ 
less figures. But three of the women in Greene’s plays 
are of importance. These are Margaret, Ida, and Dorothea. 
Ida is the least fully protrayed. But she is a fine character. 
Whether at the court or on her porch in the country she is 
the same, firm in her morality to resist the love of the king, 
bright, clean-minded, calm, serious. Dorothea is descended 
from the type of faithful women who are true in the face of 
all disaster. When she is told of her husband’s falseness, 
she refuses to believe. She even maintains that the letter 
is forged which contains the order for her assassination. 
But Dorothea is not an abstraction of faithfulness. She 
is human in her faith, she is virtuous, she is lovely. Trem¬ 
blingly she sets off in disguise to avoid danger. Affectionate 
toward the little Nano who accompanies her in her distress, 
ready to forgive wrong before forgiveness is asked, beloved 
by all who surround her, she is an admirable woman. 

Margaret is Greene’s best character; and she is charming 
indeed. Margaret is a lodge-keeper’s daughter, young, 
vivacious, witty, beautiful. She is clearly portrayed. She 
arouses interest as she goes about her work, as she gives the 
prince a drink from her dairy, as she goes with the young 
country folk to the fair, as she talks with Lacy and falls in 
love with the dashing courtier. She is faithful to the man 
of her choice even though her other suitor is the king’s own 
son. When Lacy’s letter comes, telling that he no longer 
loves her, she decides to be a nun; and if you do not know 
that so beautiful a play must perforce end happily, you 
would feel sorry for her as she makes her adieu, 

“Now farewell, world, the engine of all woe! 

Farewell to friends and father! welcome Christ! 

Adieu to dainty robes! this base attire 
Better befits an humble mind to God 
Than all the show of rich habiliments. 


THE PLAYS 


199 


Farewell, O love, and, with fond love, farewell, 

Sweet Lacy, whom I lovM once so dear! ” 

Strangely inconsistent is her renouncing of the convent when 
she learns that Lacy has but tried her love. Yet happily 
so. And beautiful is her joy in the new clothes with which 
she decks herself for her marriage, to go off to the court to 
live. Pure, unspoiled, fresh, Margaret is a rare creation. 

Lovely as those heroines are, and important as they are 
in the development of Elizabethan drama, the figure of 
Nano is, Professor Woodberry thinks, the real connecting 
link between Greene and Shakespeare. Certainly there is 
much about the dwarf which is of interest. He does stand 
in a very striking way between the Vice of the moralities 
and early comedies on the one hand, and Launce and Touch¬ 
stone on the other. Yet he is significant for his own sake. 
Nano is the product of the same imagination which pro¬ 
duced the delightful women. He is delicately drawn. His 
little body, his lightness of foot, his sprightliness, his wit, his 
loyalty to his mistress, make him a lovable personality. Yet 
personality is scarcely the correct word. Our affection for 
Nano is not that for a fellow human being. It is rather that 
given to a pet or a living big doll. “ What wouldn’t one give 
to have him in a box and take him out to talk!”— as Mrs. 
Carlyle might say. 

The figures of Ida, Dorothea, Margaret, Nano, do much 
to give charm to Greene’s successful plays, and constitute 
no small part of Greene’s contribution to the drama. The 
second element which made Greene’s success was the out- 
of-doors which is to be found most delightfully in Friar 
Bacon. The surcharged atmosphere of courts and battle¬ 
fields clears away for the calm air of Fressingfield and the 
activity of the Harleston Fair, where Margaret shines 
“amongst the cream bowls” and where cheese is safely “set 
upon the racks.” 


200 


ROBERT GREENE 


“Well, if you chance to come by Fressingfield, 

Make but a step into the Keeper’s Lodge; 

And such poor fare as woodmen can afford, 

Butter and cheese, cream and fat venison, 

You shall have store, and welcome therewithal.” 

Freshness and delicacy are Greene’s contributions, mani¬ 
fested in the brightness of the out-of-doors, the idyllic 
country life, the attractive women of his comedies. The 
rant and superficiality of the earlier plays are Greene’s, too. 
They are a part of his work, and reveal a definite side of his 
make-up. But they are not contributions. Marlowe had 
made an advance. For Greene to have copied Marlowe — 
even to have done well what Marlowe had done — would 
have been no addition. To have copied Marlowe and to 
have failed, is loss. In the later plays, however, there is 
originality and gain. 


CONCLUSION 


It cannot but be, with all the tangled threads of discussion 
and the intricate analyses, that the idea of Greene emerges 
somewhat blurred and indistinct. I propose, then, as shortly 
as possible, to bring together the results of the foregoing 
chapters into a summary. Such a process may perhaps 
make the portrait a little clearer. 

I have presented Greene as, fundamentally, a man of 
letters. To this one fact all other facts are subordinate. 
The statement that he wrote for his living explains Greene 
as fully, I think, as any single statement can. It was this 
keeping his finger on the pulse of the day, as it were, which 
determined the course of his career and which developed his 
characteristics both personal and literary. 

Greene produced many works of many kinds. Beginning 
with the didactic narrative of Lyly, he changed, as fashions 
changed, in order to follow closely the general trend of 
Elizabethan fiction. Frame-work tales, romances, prodigal 
stories, repentances, social pamphlets both serious and not 
serious, he wrote and arranged under one or another of 
his three mottoes. And because no one of those forms died 
out in his lifetime he continued occasionally to publish 
pamphlets of an earlier kind after he had for the most part 
proceeded to a later one. Once Marlowe and Kyd had 
drawn his attention to the drama, he began to write plays. 
Whenever he saw an opportunity, in season or out, he was 
ready in a moment with something for the market. Hasty 
in publication, and desiring nothing beyond the immediate 
sale, Greene took no thought for finishing his work to a 

201 


202 


ROBERT GREENE 


degree of perfection, or for removing from it flaws that might 
easily have been removed. Certain qualities of style he 
wanted it to have for it to be successful. Further than that 
there was no need to go. Much of it, consequently, is slip¬ 
shod. It could not well have been otherwise in view of the 
rapidity with which Greene wrote it and of the end he had 
in mind. There is about it, however, that which deserves 
praise. Greene, for all his making no attempt at “ winning 
credite,” had enough of real ability in him to impart signif¬ 
icance to most of his writings, whether in the way of intro¬ 
ducing continental ideas or of creating narrative. 

To us, much of the culture is commonplace and dull. 
We are no longer interested, except in a historical way, in 
the new ideas on manners and speech which were of so much 
concern to the Elizabethans. But in the narratives we can 
still find some pleasure. In all of them Greene manifests 
skill in getting the story along. Slow as the action appears 
to be, with the obstructing speeches and passions and tears, 
it is, in truth, usually swift. Characterization is less strong. 
There are few people in Greene’s works whom we remember 
for the vividness with which they are conceived. Some of 
them have a delightful air of refinement and charm; some 
of them are sufficiently distinct for us to know them and to 
become interested in their welfare as characters. But none 
are great. 

It cannot be said that there is an evolution in the works of 
Greene as regards the kinds of pamphlets. His romances 
are not a higher literary form than the frame-work tales, 
nor did the former arise out of the latter. The prodigal 
stories, again, were a progress in time only, and developed 
from an interest not associated with the romances. The 
conny-catching pamphlets came from no broader attitude 
toward life than did any of the works which had preceded 
them. 


CONCLUSION 


203 


The earlier novels are encumbered with all the Euphuistic 
adornment that Greene could well bestow. The later ones 
are comparatively simple. The difference results partly, of 
course, from the gradual turn of the age in the direction 
of simplicity; but it seems to me that there was also a 
growth in the art of expression by Greene himself. While 
he kept morality as the pretext for his writing, he more 
and more appreciated the story for its own sake. His sen¬ 
tences became shorter, and grammatical to a degree unknown 
in the beginning. The style was more compact, more direct, 
and, to us at least, more effective. 

These are the main points about what and how Greene 
wrote. There is one other. Back of the matter and the 
method there was the man. We began with the man, and 
we shall end with him. 

If we do not approach Greene in the right way, he is exceed¬ 
ingly tiresome. There is much about him that is superficial. 
If we cannot see beyond the didacticism and the literary 
mannerisms, — speeches, letters, long-drawn courtships, and 
the rest of it — Greene is very stupid. And his personality 
has no attraction for us if we are wholly unsympathetic for 
the young wits who attempted to flourish in Bohemia, who 
lived their short lives and died untimely deaths. 

But if our nature is not too unlike his, we find much that 
interests us. When we come to know him, Greene appeals 
to our imagination. About the idea of him in his green 
cloak, his hair a little over-long, his reddish, pointed beard 
“whereat you might hang a jewel”—perhaps a slightly 
fantastic figure if we judge him closely — about this pic¬ 
ture, we gather the characteristics which Greene had, and 
we endeavor to recreate him in our mind’s eye. We think 
of his carelessness and his lack of providence, his wilful ways, 
his separation from his wife, and his last thought of her. We 
remember his bravado, a certain little swagger in his walk, 


204 


ROBERT GREENE 


a pride in his work that he could never quite down. And 
his sentimentality, his aphorisms, his tendency to preach, 
all these we put into the picture. 

We pardon the tediousness. We take pleasure in the charm 
and refinement which is present in his romances and his 
poems, and in the freshness of his better plays. The illus¬ 
trative tales of the conny-catchers give us keen delight. 
But we must have humor enough not to interpret them too 
seriously. 

About our whole conception of Greene there should, 
indeed, be something humorous. We need to laugh at his 
oddities rather than to be provoked to indignation by them. 
Greene is not a man to whom life unfolds infinite possi¬ 
bilities. He has no visions of greatness. Yet he does not 
tell us to the contrary. His interest is in the affair of the 
day; his trade is his chief concern. But he never cracks a 
smile as he sets about to expose the vices of London, never 
acknowledges for a moment that he is not the social investi¬ 
gator he pretends to be. He publishes stories of repentance, 
and leaves it to us to discover that repentance is only his 
necessary machinery. 

He lies continually. We cannot accept a word he says 
without the support of our own judgment. It is not the 
kind of lying, however, that we censure harshly; it does 
nobody harm. We are inclined to be a little out of temper 
sometimes; we wish he were more trustworthy, for it would 
save us trouble in understanding him. But after all, it’s 
pretense and we must recognize it as such. 

Greene is interested in appearances. He does not care 
about the real worth of what he writes. If it looks well, 
he is satisfied. Sincerity is not among his ideals. He 
gathers up all sorts of information from widely scattered 
sources, he attributes quotations now to one man and now 
to another, he repeats himself, he is inconsistent over and 


CONCLUSION 


205 


over again. None of these things disturbs his peace of mind. 
He says nothing about them; he seems to be unaware that 
they exist. So he goes calmly on. Naive we might almost 
think him to be if we did not know otherwise. 

There is a dark side, too. Part of the repentance was 
genuine. Although we may laugh up our sleeve at the 
childish faith in the credulity of man, we cannot but pity 
Greene that he was driven so hard. “This booke hath 
many things, which I would not have written on my 
Tombe,” he said in one of his Prefaces; 1 and the cry 
cannot fail to reach us. The works had not been bad; nor 
the life, it may be, so bad as he thought. But the anguish 
for them both was not lessened thereby. 

Pity does not grant a man a place in literature. He must 
deserve it on other grounds. Greene’s place is secure to 
him for the historical reason that he was one of the Eliza¬ 
bethans. It is secure also through the charm of his poems 
and romances, and through the clever social pamphlets. 
Finally, it is secure through the personality of the man 
himself. 


1 Vol. XII., p. 196. 











APPENDIX I 

TABULATION OF THE FRAME-WORK TALES 


Planetomachia, 1585. 

Venus Tragedie. — Italianesque, on the model of the 
novella. Analyzed in the text, p. 29. 

Saturnes Tragedie. — To show the evil influence of love. 
The story of Rhodope and Psamneticus of Memphis, 
the courtezan who became queen. 

Penelopes Web , 1587. 

First Tale. — To show wifely obedience. A queen put 
away and taken again. There are speeches (p. 172, 
p. 173, Vol V.) practically like some in Saturnes Tra¬ 
gedie (p. 125, p. 127, Vol. V). The situation is much 
the same. There is no doubt that Greene had the earlier 
story in mind when he wrote the latter. This tale is 
from Cintio, III, 5. 

Second Tale. — To illustrate chastity. A woman loved by 
a nobleman is imprisoned by him. She escapes and 
joins her husband. The nobleman repents and gives 
them riches. 

Third Tale. — To praise silence in women. A king gives 
his crown to the son whose wife is most virtuous, that 
is, best able to keep silence. 

Censure to Philautus, 1587. 

Ulisses Tale. — A woman elopes with a gentleman of the 
court whom she later poisons. Fearing treachery in 
her husband’s reconciliation, she kills herself. 

207 


208 


ROBERT GREENE 


Helenus Tragedie. — How a queen outwitted her enemy 
who was in possession of her city. 

Hectors Tragedie. — To illustrate fortitude in a soldier. 
The eldest of three brothers defends his crown against 
the rebellion of his united younger brothers. 

Achilles Tragedie. — On liberality. Roxader of Athens 
on account of his liberality was able to save his native 
city and to be made dictator. 

Perymedes, 1588. 

First Tale. — Story of Marcella and Prestynes, an imita¬ 
tion of Decameron, II. 6. The tale of a separation of 
husband and wife and children by Fortune. Of their 
reunion. 

Second Tale. — A romantic story of a poor man and a rich 
girl. The man goes away to make his fortune. She 
follows, but is shipwrecked. She is cast upon the same 
shore. He has become famous. They are married 
and go back to their home. The story is from Decam¬ 
eron, V. 2. 

Third Tale. — A young woman loves a poor man; her 
father has another suitor selected. It happens that 
the father and daughter and selected suitor are ban¬ 
ished. They lead humble lives. The poor man follows 
them, wins renown, and marries the girl. 

Alcida, 1588. 

First Tale. — Story of Fiordespine, who for her haughti¬ 
ness in love was turned into a marble pillar. 

Second Tale. — Story of Eriphila, who for her fickleness 
was turned into a camelion. (Some passages identical 
with passages in Mamillia.) 

Third Tale. — Marpesia, for her inability to keep a secret, 
was turned into a rose-tree. 


TABULATION OF THE FRAMEWORK TALES 


209 


Ciceronis Amor, 1589. 

The Sheepheardes Tale. — A pastoral. How Phillis and 
Coridon made up and were married. 

Orpharion, 1590. 

Orpheus Tale. — Tale of Lydia, from Ariosto, 34:7-43. 

Arions Tale. — How Argentina preserved her chastity by 
promising to consent to her lover after he had been 
confined for three days without food, and how the lover 
broke the agreement by first eating meat. 

Mourning Garment, 1590. 

The Shepheards Tale. — A pastoral. How Alexis aban¬ 
doned Rosamond for Phillida, and how Rosamond 
died of grief. Whereupon Alexis hanged himself upon 
a willow-tree. 

Francescos Fortunes, 1590. 

The Hosts Tale. — The shepherdess Mirimida had three 
suitors. Letters from them all arrived at the same 
instant. She appointed a meeting with them all. 
When they had promised to abide by her decision, she 
told them all nay. 

Farewell to Follie, 1591. 

Peratios Tale. — Tale of Pride. Vadislaus, king of Buda, 
was deposed for his pride and tyranny, and went forth 
to wander as a beggar. » 

Cosimos Tale. — Of Lust. Story of Semiramis. 

Berardinos Tale. — Of Gluttony. A poor man unjustly 
judged by the drunken ruler, invited the ruler to a feast. 
While the ruler was drunk the poor man built a scaf¬ 
fold and invited the citizens. When the ruler found 
that he was to be hanged, he hanged himself. 


210 


ROBERT GREENE 


Groatsworth of Wit , 1592. 

Lamilias Tale. — An animal story with a hidden meaning. 
Accounts for the enmity between dogs and badgers. 

Robertos Tale. — Of the fabliau type. Story of the farmer 
bridegroom, who is cheated out of his wife and forced 
to marry another girl. 

Vision, 1590-92? 

Chaucers Tale. — Of the fabliau type. Analyzed in the 
text, p. 28. 

Gowers Tale. — A tale of jealousy. A man who has put 
away his wife on account of jealousy, is cured of his 
jealousy by a magician who transforms him into a young 
man. In this shape he tries his wife’s faith, and find¬ 
ing her true takes her back again. 


APPENDIX II 

MISCONCEPTIONS CONCERNING GREENE 


There are a few matters which remain to be treated 
here. These, perhaps, demand an apology for being con¬ 
sidered at all. At least, if they cannot be totally ignored 
they are no longer of sufficient importance to warrant their 
inclusion elsewhere than in an appendix. Although unmis¬ 
takably founded on errors, they have so continued to be 
discussed seriously by Greene’s biographers as almost to 
make them traditional, and a discussion of them unavoidable. 

I. One of these misapprehensions is that of Greene’s 
connection with the church. Since the days of Dyce various 
biographers, Bernhardi, Fleay, and Grosart, have argued that 
Greene was at one time a minister. Fuller investigation has 
shown that he was not. The situation may be briefly sum¬ 
marized as follows: 

1. In 1576, a Robert Grene was presented by the Queen 
to the rectory of Walkington in Yorkshire. 1 There is no 
reason, however, on the basis of this fact, for assuming that 
Greene was connected with the church, inasmuch as he was 
at that time a freshman in the University. 

2. Greene cannot have been he who was Vicar of Tolles- 
bury in Essex from June 19, 1584, to February 17, 1586; 2 

1 Rymer’s Foedra, Vol. XV, p. 765. 

2 The entry (in Newcourt’s Repertorium, Vol. II, p. 602, which uses 
as its authority Bp. Grindal’s Register, fol. 213; fol. 225) is as follows: 

“Tollsbury. 

Rob. Grene cl. 19 Jun. 1584, per mort. Searles. 

Barth. Moody, cl. 17 Feb. 1585, per resign. Grene.” 

211 


212 


ROBERT GREENE 


for that period in Greene’s life was, by his own account, 
filled with other events. 

3. He cannot, as Mr. Fleay thought, 3 be identified, as 
Robert the parson , with the Robert Persj or Rupert Persten 
who was with the Earl of Leicester’s troupe on the Continent 
from December 1585, to July, 1587. We have no evidence 
that Greene formed a part of this troupe. It is, moreover, 
useless to attempt to make parson out of the Persj or Persten 
as it appears in the Saxon and Danish records. Besides, 
if Greene was Vicar of Tollesbury, as Fleay said he was, he 
must have been abroad as a member of a troupe of players 
during three months of the time that he was preaching in 
Essex. 

4. Greene himself does not speak of having been a 
minister. Nor do any of his contemporaries, Nashe, Burbye, 
Dekker, Heywood, Chettle,— not even the arch-enemy, 
Gabriel Harvey. 

5. A passage in the Epistle Dedicatorie to the anon¬ 
ymous tract Martine Mar-Sixtus has been taken to refer to 
Greene as a minister. This tract was issued in 1591, and 
was re-issued with change of date only in 1592. The epistle 
is signed R. W. 4 and clearly refers to Greene in the words 
about those who “are fame to put on mourning garment, 
and cry, Farewell.” But the words, “I loathe to speake it, 
every red-nosed rimester is an author,” whether they refer 
to Greene or not, are those from which the misunderstand¬ 
ing has come. It is, though, a misunderstanding which is 
removed at once when the word is seen to be not minister , 
as Dr. Grosart read, but rimester. 

6. Much has been made, at times, of certain manuscript 

3 Life of Shakespeare pp. 92, 105; Hist. Stage, p. 82. 

4 This Epistle is reprinted in Notes and Queries, 10th Ser., No. 2, 
Dec. 17, 1904; and the suggestion is there made that R. W. was Richard 
Willes. 


MISCONCEPTIONS CONCERNING GREENE 213 

notes on the title-page of the 1599 edition of The Pinner of 
Wakefield. These notes are: 

(a.) “Written by ... a minister who acted the piner’s 
pt in it himselfe. Teste W. Shakespeare.” 

(b) “Ed. Juby saith that the play was made by Ro. 
Greene.” 

Reasoning on the evidence of these notes is unsound for 
it must be remembered, as Mr. Gayley well says, 5 “that 
both attributions are hearsay; that both notes are anon¬ 
ymous, that one or both may be fraudulent; 6 that there 
is no certain proof that they were written by contempora¬ 
ries; and that, unless their contents are shown to be accu¬ 
rate as well as authentic, they do not connect any Robert 
Greene with the ministry.” 

II. Another of the misapprehensions concerning Greene 
is that he was at one time an actor. That Greene was an 
actor was held particularly by Dyce and Fleay, the former 
of whom misinterpreted certain of Harvey’s remarks about 
Greene’s “wilde head, full of mad brain and a thousand 
crotchets;” the latter of whom was anxious to identify 
Greene the parson as an actor in Leicester’s troupe. There 
is, however, no reason on the grounds taken by Dyce or 
Fleay, nor on any other grounds, for thinking that he was 
ever professionally an actor. Neither he nor any of his 
contemporaries says anything about it. 

III. That Greene was once studying to become a physi¬ 
cian has often been stated in biographies of him. The basis 
of the statement has of course been the occurrence of the 
phrase “student in phisicke” on the title-page of Planeto- 

5 Representative English Comedies, p. 401. 

6 It seems good to call attention to a remark made by Mr. Greg in 
Mod. Lang. Rev. 1906, p. 244. He said, “One to be competent to 
judge (in regard to these manuscript notes) must examine the original 
notes, and also be familiar with the Ireland and the Collier forgeries.” 


214 


ROBERT GREENE 


machia , 1585. But the presence of these words does not in 
any way warrant the assumption that Greene was a student 
of medicine. Inasmuch as Planetomachia is a pamphlet de¬ 
signed to set forth the opposition of the planets and to be 
an exposition concerning their influence, it seems better to 
interpret the phisicke in the sense of natural philosophy, in 
which sense it is used, for example in Thomas Bowes’ trans¬ 
lation of Primaudaye’s French Academy (1586) as “the 
studie of naturall things: metaphysycke, which is of super¬ 
natural things;” and to believe that Greene used the word 
merely that he might speak with pretended authority on 
the subject of the stars. 


APPENDIX III 

EARLY ALLUSIONS TO GREENE 


In the following pages no attempt is made to bring together 
all the early allusions to Greene. Only those are printed 
which seem to help in forming an estimate of how Greene 
was regarded by his contemporaries. 

1. Letter by Christopher Bird. Aug. 29,1592. Harvey’s 
Works, Ed. Grosart. Vol. I, p. 160. 

“In steed of other novels, I sende you my opinion, in a plaine, but 
true Sonnet, upon the famous new worke, intituled, A Quippe for an 
upstart Courtier; or, forsooth, A quaint Dispute betweene Velvet-breeches , 
and Cloth-breeches; as fantasticall and fond a Dialogue, as I have 
seene: and for some Particulars, one of the most licentious, and in¬ 
tolerable Invectives, that ever I read.” 

A due Commendation of the Quipping Autor. 

Greene the Connycatcher, of this Dreame the Autor. 

For his dainty devise, deserveth the hauter. 

A rakehell: A makeshift: a scribling foole: 

A famous bayard, in Citty, and Schoole. 

Now sicke, as a Dog: and ever brainesick: 

Where such a raving, and desperate Dick? 

Sir reverence, A scurvy Master of Art. 

He sweared inough . . . 

Aunscornes ther Aunswere: and Envy Salutes 

With Shortest vowels, and with longest mutes. 

For farther triall, himself he referres 

To proofe, and sound judgment, that seldome erres. 

Now good Robin-good-fellow, and gentle Greene-sleeves, 
Give him leave to be quiet, that none aggreeves. 

2. Harvey’s The Second Letter. Sept. 5, 1592. 

My next businesse was to enquire after the famous Author: who was 
reported to lye dangerously sicke in a shoemakers house near Dow-gate: 

215 


216 


ROBERT GREENE 


not of the plague, ... as a Gentleman saide, but of a surfett of pickle 
herringe and rennish wine, or as some suppose, of an exceeding feare. 
For in his extreamest want, he offered ten, or rather then faile twenty 
shillinges to the printer (a huge som with him at that instant) to leave 
out the matter of the three brothers, p. 162. 

I was suddainely certified, that the king of the paper stage (so the 
Gentleman tearmed Greene ) had played his last part, & was gone to 
Tarleton: whereof I protest, I was nothing glad . . . because I was 
Deprived of that remedy in Law, that I entended against him, in the 
behalfe of my Father, p. 167. 

Looke for my Confutation of his fine Quippe . . . whome his sweete 
hostisse, for a tender farewell, crowned with a Garland of Bayes: to 
shew, that a tenth Muse honoured him more being deade, than all the 
nine honoured him alive, p. 172. 

Here lies the man, whom mistrisse Isam crown’d with bayes; 

Shee, shee, that joyed to heare, her Nightingales sweete layes. 

p. 1. 

3. Harvey’s Third Letter. Sept. 8 & 9, 1592. 

Thanke other for thy borrowed & filched plumes of some little 
Italianated bravery; & what remaineth, but flat Impudencie, and 
grosse Detraction: the proper ornaments of thy sweete utterance? 
p. 187. 

I am not to extenuate or prejudice his wit, which could not any 
way be great, though som way not the least of our vulgar writers, & 
mani-waies very ungracious: but who ever esteemed him either wise, 
or learned, or honest, or any way credible? p. 189. 

The second Toy of London; the Stale of Poules, the Ape of Euphues, 
the Vice of the Stage, the mocker of the simple world: . . . Peruse his 
famous bookes: and in steede of Omne tulit punctum, qui miscmt utile 
dulci (that forsooth was his professed Poesie) Loe a wilde head, ful 
of mad braine and a thousand crotchets: A scholler, a Discourser, a 
Courtier, a ruffian, a Gamester, a Lover, etc., p. 189. 

But I pray God they have not done more harme by corruption of 
manners, than by quickening of witte: and I would, some Buyers had 
either more Reason to discerne, or lesse Appetite to desire such Novels, 
p. 190. 

The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia is not greene inough for queasie 
stomackes, but they must have Greenes Arcadia: and I beleeve most 
eagerlie longed for Greenes Faerie Queene. p. 191. 


EARLY ALLUSIONS TO GREENE 


217 


4. Chettle. Kind-harts Dreame. Dec. 8, 1592. Ed. 
Rimbault. Percy. Soc. Vol. 5. 

About three moneths since died M. Robert Greene, leaving many 
papers in sundry Booke sellers hands, among other his Groats-worth of 
wit, in which, a letter written to divers play-makers, is offensively by 
one or two of them taken . . . For the first, whose learning I reverence, 
and, at the perusing of Greenes booke, stroke out what then, in con¬ 
science I thought, he in some displeasure writ: or had it been true, yet 
to publish it was intolerable: him I would wish to use me no worse 
than I deserve. I had onely in the copy this share, it was il written, 
as sometime Greenes hand was none of the best, ... To be briefe, I 
writ it over. p. iv. 

With him was the fifth, a man of indifferent yeares, of face amible, 
of body well proportioned, his attire after the habite of a scholler-like 
gentleman, onely his haire somewhat long, whome I supposed to be 
Robert Greene, maister of Artes. . . . He was of singular pleasaunce, 
the verye supporter, and, to no mans, disgrace bee this intended, the 
only comedian, of a vulgar writer, in this country, p. 11. 

5. Nashe, Foure Letters Confuted. Jan. 12, 1593. 
Ed. McKerrow. 

Had hee liv’d, Gabriel , ... he would have made thee an example 
of ignominy to all ages that are to come, and driven thee to eate thy 
owne booke butterd, as I sawe him make an Apparriter once in a 
Tavern eate his citation, waxe and all, very handsomely serv’d twixt 
two dishes, p. 271. 

Is my stile like Greenes or my jeaste like Tarllons? Do I talke of 
any counterfeit birds, or hearbs, or stones, or rake up any new-found 
poetry from under the wals of Troy? p. 319. 

Of force I must graunt that Greene came oftner in print than men 
of judgment allowed off, but neverthelesse he was a daintie slave to 
content the taile of a Tearme, and stuffe Serving mens pockets, p. 329. 

What Greene was, let some other answere for him as much as I have 
done; I had no tuition over him; he might have writ another Galatseo 
of manners, for his manners everie time I came in his companie: I 
saw no such base shifting or abhominable villanie by him. Something 
there was which I have heard, not seene, that hee had not that regarde 
to his credite in, which had beene requisite he should, p. 330. 


218 


ROBERT GREENE 


6. Greenes Newes both from Heaven and Hell, Anon. 
1593. 

You have beene a busie fellowe with youre penne, it was you that writ 
the Bookes of cony-catching, but sirra, could you finde out the base 
abuses of a company of petty varlets that lived by pilfering cosonages, 
and could you not as well have descryed the subtill and fraudulent 
practises of great conny-catchers, such as rides upon footeclothes, and 
sometime in coatches, and walkes the streets in long gownes and velvet 
coates? 

7. Greenes Funeralls. 1594. By R. B. 

(A series of verses eulogizing Greene most highly. Valuable for its 
list of Greene's works.) 

8. Warner. Pan his Syrinx. 1584. In 2nd Ed. 1597. 

A scholler better than my selfe on whose grave the grasse now 
groweth green, whom otherwise, though otherwise to me guiltie, I name 
not. 

(Warner is probably accusing Greene of plagiarism in that he took 
the plot of Never too Late from his Opheltes.) 

9. Francis Meres. Palladis Tamia. 1598. An English 
Garner. Critical Essays and Literary Fragments, with an 
Introduction by J. Churton Collins. 

As Achilles tortured the dead body of Hector; and as Antonius and 
his wife Fulvia tormented the lifeless corpse of Cicero; so Gabriel 
Harvey hath showed the same inhumanity to Greene, that lies full low 
in his grave, p. 19. 

10. Rowlands. Tis Merrie when Gossips Meete. 1602. 
Hunterian Club. A conference between a gentleman and 
an apprentice. 

Prentice 

What lacke you Gentle-man? See a new Booke new come foorth. 
Sir: buy a new Booke, sir. 

Gentleman 

New Booke say’st: Faith I can see no prettie thing come foorth 
to my humours liking. There are some old Bookes that I have more 
delight in than in your new, if thou couldst help me to them. 


EARLY ALLUSIONS TO GREENE 


219 


Prentice 

Troth sir, I thinke I can shew you as many of all sorts as any in 
London, sir. 

Gentleman 

Can’st helpe mee to all Greenes Bookes in one volume? But I will 
have them every one, not any wanting. 

Prentice 

Sir; I have the most part of them, but I lacke Conny-catching, and 
some halfe dozen more: but I thinke I could procure them. There 
be in the Towne I am sure can fit you. 

11. Dekker. A Knights Conjuring. 1607. Percy So¬ 
ciety. Ed. Rimbault, Vol. 5. p. 76. 

These were likewise carowsing to one another at the holy well, 
some of them singing Paeans to Apollo, som of them hymnes to the 
rest of the Goddes, whil’st Marlow, Greene, and Peele had got under 
the shades of a large vyne, laughing to see Nash (that was but newly 
come to their Colledge) still haunted with the sharpe and satyricall 
spirit that followed him here upon earth. 

12. Overbury. Characters. Ed. Rimbault. 1890. p. 
101. A Chamber-maide. 

She reads Greenes works over and over. 

13. Taylor. The Water Poet. Works, Ed. 1630. 
Spenser Soc. 1869. Praise of Hemp-Seed, p. 72. 

In Paper many a Poet now survives 

Or else their lines had perish’d with their lives, 

Old Chaucer, Gower, and Sir Thomas More, 

Sir Philip Sidney who the Lawrell wore, 

Spencer, and Shakespeare did in Art excell, 

Sir Edward Dyer, Greene, Nash, Daniel, 

Silvester Beaumont, Sir John Harington. 

14. Heywood. Hierarchie of the Blessed Angels. 1635, 

p. 206 . 

Greene who had in both Academies ta’en 
Degree of Master, yet could never gaine 
To be called more than Robin. 

















BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Adams, Joseph Quincy, Jr. Modern Philology vol. 3, p. 317, Jan., 
1906. Greene’s Menaphon and The Thracian Wonder. 

Mod. Lang. Notes , XXII. 225, Nov. 7, 1907. Robert Greene’s 
What Thing is Love? 

Ameis, Theodorus. Jahresbericht hohere Burgerschule zu Langensala. 

1869. On Robert Greene’s Dramatical Style. 

Arber, Edward. A Transcript of the Stationers’ Registers. 5 vols. 
Privately printed. 1875-1894. 

Atkins, J. W. H. Cambridge History of English Literature. Chap. 

XVI. Vol. III., p. 886. Elizabethan Prose Fiction. 

Aydelotte, Frank. Oxford Historical and Literary Studies. Vol. I. 

Elizabethan Rogues and Vagabonds. 

Baker, G. P. Cambridge History of English Literature. Vol. V., 
Chap. VI., p. 136. The Plays of the University Wits. 
Bernhardi, Wolfgang. Robert Greenes Leben und Schriften. Eine 
historisch-kritische Studie. Leipzig, 1874. 

Boas, F. S. Shakespeare and his Predecessors. New York, 1908. 
Bodenstedt, F. M. von. German Edition of Greene’s Plays. Marlowe 
und Greene als Vorlaufer Shakespeares. Brunswick, 1858. 

Bond, R. Warwick. The Complete Works of John Lyly. 3 vols. 
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902. 

Bradley, Henry. Mod. Lang. Rev. vol. I., 3, 208 ff. Some Textual 
Puzzles in Greene’s Works. 

Brereton, J. LeGay. Mod. Lang. Rev. Vol. II., p. 34. The Rela¬ 
tion of The Thracian Wonder to Greene’s Menaphon. 

Brie, F. Eng. Stud. Vol. 42, p. 217. Lyly und Greene. 

Brooke, C. F. Tucker. The Authorship of 2 and 3 Henry VI. 

The Tudor Drama. A History of English National Drama to the 
Retirement of Shakespeare. Houghton Mifflin Co. 1911. 
Brown, J. M. New Zealand Magazine , No. 6. April, 1877. pp. 
97-133. An Early Rival of Shakespeare. Reproduced substan¬ 
tially in Vol. I. of Grosart’s edition of Greene’s Works. 

Bullen, A. H. Article on Greene in Dictionary of National Biography. 

221 


222 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Caro, J. Eng. Stud. Vol. 2, p. 141. Die Historischen Elemente in 
Shakespeares Sturm und Wintermarchen. 

Chandler, F. W. The Literature of Roguery. Houghton Mifflin Co., 
1907. 

Collier, J. P. The History of English Dramatic Poetry to the Time of 
Shakespeare: and Annals of the Stage to the Restoration. 3 Vols., 1831. 

Collins, J. C. The Plays and Poems of Robert Greene. Clarendon 
Press, 1905. 2 vols. 

Conrad, Hermann. Jahrbuch der Deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft. 
XXIX-XXX, 1894, p. 210. Robert Greene als Dramatiker. 

Cooper, C. H. Athenae Cantabrigiensis. 

Courthope, W. J. A History of English Poetry. Macmillan and 
Co., 1906. 

Crawford, Chas. Collectanea , First Series, 1906. Edmund Spenser, 
“Locrine,” and “ Selimus.” 

Creizenach, W. Anglia , 1885, Vol 8, p. 419. Zu Greene’s James 
the Fourth. 

Cunliffe, J. W. Cambridge History of English Literature. Vol. 5, 
Chap. IV, p. 68. Early English Tragedy. 

Daniel, P. A. Athenaeum , Oct. 8, 1881, p. 465. Greene and Cinthio. 
ibid. April 16, 1898, p. 512. “Locrine” and “Selimus.” 

Debate Betweene Pride and Lowliness. By F. T. Shak. Soc. 
Pub., Vol. XVII., 1841. 

Delius. N. Jahrbuch der Deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft. XV., 
1880, p. 22. Greene’s Pandosto und Shakespeare’s Winter's Tale. 

Dickinson, T. H. The Complete Plays of Robert Greene. Mermaid 
Series, 1909. 

Disraeli, Isaac. Calamities of Authors: Literary Ridicule. Illus¬ 
trated by some Account of a Literary Satire. 

Dyce, Alexander. Collected Plays and Poems of Robert Greene , 2 
vols., 1831. Contains an account of author and list of works. 
Dramatic and Poetical Works of Robert Greene and George Peele. 
1 vol., 1858. 

Erskine, John. The Elizabethan Lyric, A Study. Columbia Uni¬ 
versity Press, 1905. 

Fleay, F. G. A Chronicle History of the Life and Work of William 
Shakespeare, Player, Poet, and Playmaker. New York, 1886. 

A Chronicle History of the London Stage, 1559-1642. 1890. 

A Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama. 

Furnivall, F. J. The Shakespeare Library, 1907. The Rogues and 
Vagabonds of Shakespeare’s Youth. 


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223 


Gayley, C. M. Representative English Comedies. Macmillan, 1903. 
Contains a monograph, “ Greene's place in Comedy ,” by G. E. 
Woodberry. 

Gilbert, Hugo. Robert Greene’s Selimus. Eine litterarhistorische 
Untersuchung. Dissertation, Kiel, 1899. 

Gosse, E. The Complete Works of Thomas Lodge. 4 vols. Printed 
for the Hunterian Club, 1883. Introduction. 

Greg, W. W. Mod. Lang. Rev., Vol. I, p. 238. 1906. Review of 
Collins’ Edition of Greene. 

The Modern Language Quarterly, vol. 3, p. 189. Giraldi Cintio and 
the English Drama. 

Grosart, Alexander. Complete Works of Robert Greene, 15 vols. 
8vo., 1881-3. Huth Library Series. Vol. 1 contains a transla¬ 
tion of Nicholas Storojenko’s Life of Greene. 

Hart, H. C. Notes and Queries. 10th Ser., Nos. 4, 5, 9. 

Hatcher, O. L. Mod. Lang. Notes. Vol. XXIII, p. 16. The Sources 
and Authorship of the Thracian Wonder. 

Hazlitt, W. C. Notes and Queries. 3rd Ser. No. IV, p. 184. 

Herford, C. H. New Shak. Soc., 1st Ser., Part 2, p. 181. A Few 
Suggestions on Green’s Romances and Shakespeare. 

The Literary Relations of England and Germany in the Sixteenth 
Century. 

Hermit of Holyport. Notes and Queries. 1st Ser., No. 3, p. 103. 
A Dutch Translation of a Tract by Robert Greene. 

Hubbard, F. G. Unpublished Article on Relation of Locrine and 
Selimus referred to, and synopsis given, in Cambridge History 
of English Literature. Vol. V, p. 96. 

Ingleby, C. M. Athenaeum. Feb. 28, 1874, p. 292. Greene’s 
“ Young Juvenal .” 

Jusserand, J. J. The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare. 
Translated from the French by Elizabeth Lee, 1895. 

Knaut, Carl. Uber die Metrik Robert Greene’s. Dissertation at 
Halle, 1890. 

Koeppel, Emil. Quellen und Forschungen. Vol. 70. Studien zur 
Geschichte der Italienischen Novelle in der Englischen Literatur 
des XVI Jahrhunderts. 

Kozmian, Stanislaus. Athenaeum, Nov. 6, 1875, p. 609. A Winter’s 
Tale. 

Lee, Jane. The New Shakespeare Society Transactions, 1875-76, p. 
219. On the Authorship of the Second and Third Parts of Henry 
VI. and the Originals. 


224 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Lee, Sidney. The French Renaissance in England. Oxford, 1910. 

McKerrow, Ronald B. The Works of Thomas Nashe. Edited from 
the original texts. Notes. 5 vols. 

McConaughy, J. L. Teacher's College Publications , Columbia Uni¬ 
versity. The School Drama. 

Mertins, Oscar. Robert Greene und the Play of George-a-Greene, the 
Pinner of Wakefield. Breslau Dissertation, 1885. 

Meyer, Edward. Litterarhistorische Forschungen. Vol. I., 1897. 
Machiavelli and the Elizabethan Drama. 

Nicholson, B. Notes and Queries. 7th Ser. III., p. 81, 124. Some 
Textual Remarks on the Play of George-a-Greene. 

Perott, Joseph de. Eng. Stud. XXXIX., p. 308. 1908. Robert 

Greenes Entlehnung aus dem Ritterspiegel. 

Ritter, Otto. De Roberti Greeni Fabula: Friar Bacon and Friar 
Bungay. Dissertation, 1866. 

Routh, Harold V. Cambridge History of English Literature. Vol. IV., 
Chap. XVI., p. 362. London and the Development of Popular 
Literature. 

Schelling, Felix E. A Book of Elizabethan Lyrics , 1895. Ginn & 
Co. 

The Queen's Progress and Other Elizabethan Sketches, No. 6. 

Elizabethan Drama. 1558-1642. 2 vols. Houghton Mifflin Co. 1908. 

English Literature during the Lifetime of Shakespeare. New York, 
1910. 

Scott, Mary Augusta. Pub. Mod. Lang. Ass'n. 1896. p. 377. 
Elizabethan Translations from the Italian: the titles of such 
works now first collected and arranged, with annotations. 

Simpson, Richard. Academy , Greene on Nashe. April 11, 1874. 

Ibid. Chettle on Shakespeare. 

The School of Shakespeare Vol. II., p. 330. 

Smith, G. C. M. Notes and Queries. 10th Ser. No. 8. p. 461. Lyly, 
Greene and Shakespeare. 

Smith, G. Gregory. Elizabethan Critical Essays. Oxford, 1904. 

Staunton, H. Athenaeum, March 21, 1874, p. 391. Greene’s Young 
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Athenaeum, Feb. 7, 1874, p. 193. A Mistaken Allusion to Shake¬ 
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Storojenko, Nicholas. Life of Robert Greene, translated by E. A. B. 
Hodgetts, in Grosart’s edition of Greene, Vol. I. 

Notes and Queries, 4th Ser., No. 12, p. 441. Dec. 6, 1873. The 
Date of Greene’s Menaphon. 


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225 


Symonds, J. A. Shakespeare’s Predecessors in the English Drama. 
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Toynbee, Paget. Athenaeum, Feb. 15, 1902, p. 216. References to 
Dante. 

Vetter, Verhandlungen der 44 Versammlung dtsche Philologen und 
Schulmanner. Robert Greene und Seine Prosa. 

Viles, Edward. (See under Furnivall.) 

Ward, A. W. A History of English Dramatic Literature to the Death of 
Queene Anne. London, 1875. 

Marlowe’s Faustus and Greene’s. Friar Bacon. Oxford, 1901. 
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and the Prodigal Son. 

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Italian Renaissance. 

The Greek Romances and Elizabethan Prose Fiction. New York, 1912. 


INDEX 


Achilles Tatius, 35 
Acolastus, 54, 55, 56 (summary), 

58, 67, 72 

Adventures of Master F. J., 120 
AEthiopian History, The, 35 
Alarum against Usurers, 91, 92 n. 
Albions England, 40 
Alcida, 25, 72 n., 167, 168 n., 176 
Allott, Robert, 184, 185 
Alphonsus, 174-177, 184, 190-193, 
194, 196, 197 
Anacreon, 137 

Anatomie of Absurditie, 168 n. 

Ann of Bohemia, 38 
Arbasto, 27, 37, 39, 45, 59, 165 
Arcadia, 6, 32 n., 34, 41 
Ariosto, 193 

Astrophel and Stella, 135 
Audeley, John, 87 n. 

Bacon, Francis, 48 
Barnfield, Richard, 146, 162 
Belleau, Remy, 137 
Blacke Booke, 3, 103 n., 116 
Blacke Bookes Messenger, 3, 82, 
100, 104, 107-109, 115, 173 
Breton, Nicholas, 146, 155, 162 
Browne, William, 146 

C. Mery Talys, 110 
Carde of Fancie, 7, 37, 39, 48, 
65-66, 165 

Caveat or Warning for Commen 
Cursetors, 85 n., 91, 92 

227 


Censure to Philautus, 23-24, 167 
Chettle, Henry, 169 
Chevalier du Soliel, Le, 38 n, 
Cinthio, Giraldi, 31 n., 196 
City Nightcap (Davenport’s), 43 n. 
Clitophon and Leudppe, 35 
Cobler of Canterbury, The, 54, 70, 
170 

Complaints (Spenser’s), 175, 186 

Daniel, Samuel, 175 n. 

Daphnis and Chloe, 35, 39, 189 
Day, Angel, 35, 39 
Debate between Pride and Lowli¬ 
ness, 122, 124 
Decameron, 21 

Defence of Conny Catching, 82, 
96-107, 109, 111, 120, 172, 

179 

Dekker, Thomas, 10, 92 n. 
Deloney, Thomas, 10 
Diary (Henslowe’s), 178, 180 
Disputation betweene a Hee and a 
Shee Conny-Catcher, 82, 99, 100, 
103 n., 105, 107, 115-121, 124, 
172 

Doctor Faustus, 195 
Dowgate, The shoemaker of, 4 
Drayton, Michael, 175 n. 

El Relox de Principes, 11 
Englands Helicon, 174 n. 

Englands Parnassus, 184 
Estienne, Henri, 137 


228 


INDEX 


Euphues, 10,13-17, 35, 37, 45, 47, 
55, 63, 76 n., 78 n., 189 
Euphues Shadow, 16 n. 

Faerie Queene, 186 
Faire Em, 180, 181 
Farewell to Follie, 23, 69, 70, 72, 
80, 103 n., 166 n., 167, 171, 172, 
181, 185 

Fenton, Geoffrey, 11, 16, 127 
Francescos Fortunes, 27, 59-62, 63, 
65, 68, 71, 80, 103 n., 141, 154, 
155, 169, 171, 172 
Fraternitye of Vacahondes, The, 
87 n. 

Friar Bacon, 78 n., 180-181, 184, 
188, 190, 195-196, 197, 199 


Gascoigne, George, 12 n., 20, 
120, 127, 134 n., 146 n., 148, 
178 n. 

George-a-Greene, The Pinner of 
Wakefield, 182, 184, 187-189 
Gli Asolani, 20 
Glasse of Government, 55 n. 
Gnaepheus, 54 
Governor (Elyot’s), 11 
Greene, Robert, brief summary of 
his life, 1-2; personal appear¬ 
ance and character, 2-3; last 
illness and death, 3-4; letter to 
his wife, 3-4; general attitude 
toward literature, 5; general 
literary qualities, 5-8; his mot¬ 
toes, 9; his Mamillia, 14-19; 
his Morando, 21-22; his Fare¬ 
well to Follie, 23; his Censure to 
Philautus, 23-24; his Penelopes 
Web, 25; his Alcida, 25; his 
Planetomachia, 25; his Pery- 


medes, 26; his Orpharion, 26; as 
an introducer of Italian thought, 
27; his Tompkins the Wheel¬ 
wright, 28; his story of Val- 
dracko, 29; the narrative art 
of his frame-work tales, 28-34; 
his relations with Greek Ro¬ 
mance, 34 seq.; his Second Part 
of Mamillia, 37; his Arbasto, 37; 
his Pandosto, 37-39; his Mena- 
phon, 39-42; his Philomela, 43; 
his Ciceronis Amor, 43; his 
attitude toward Fortune, 43; 
conventionality of his style in 
fiction, 45-49; his character¬ 
ization, 49-52; his Spanish 
Masquer ado, 53; his Royal Ex¬ 
change, 53; his adoption of the 
motto, sero sed serio, 53-54; 
influence of the prodigal son 
story upon him, 55 seq.; his 
Mourning Garment, 56-59; his 
Never too Late, and Francescos 
Fortunes, 59-62; his Mirrour of 
Modestie, 61; his Groatsworth of 
Wit, 62-65, 72-76; his Carde 
of Fancie, 65-66; interpreta¬ 
tion of his prodigal son pam¬ 
phlets, 66-72; Gabriel Harvey’s 
account of his death, 74; 
purity of his writings, 75; 
his Repentance, 76-79; his 
travel on the continent, 77 n.; 
a list of his social pamphlets, 82; 
his Notable Discovery of Coos- 
nage, 82-83; his Second Part 
and his Thirde Part, 83; his 
adoption of the motto, nasdmur 
pro patria, 84 seq.; his de¬ 
fence of the style of the social 
pamphlets, 85 n.; the serious- 


INDEX 


229 


ness of his social pamphlets, 
87 seq.; his use of the Manifest 
Detection of Dyce Play, 89-91; 
his accuracy in the social 
pamphlets, 91-96; the Defence of 
Conny Catching, and his author¬ 
ship of it, 96-107; a new step in 
the Greene-Harvey-Nashe quar¬ 
rel, 105-106; his Blacke Bookes 
Messenger , 107-109; signifi¬ 

cance of his social pamphlets as 
narrative, 109-114; his Disputa¬ 
tion, 115-121; his Quippefor an 
Upstart Courtier, 121-126; his 
lost ballad, 127; relation of his 
poems to his romances, 127-129; 
his poetic themes, 129-144; 
his Maidens Dreame, 142; his 
metres, 144-155; merit of his 
verse, with selections from 
his poetry, 155-163; his Al- 
phonsus, 174-177, 190-193; his 
Looking Glasse for London and 
Englande, 177-179; his Orlando 
Furioso, 179-18Q, 193-195; his 
Friar Bacon, 180-181, 195-196; 
his James IV., 181-182, 196- 
197; summary of the dates of 
his plays, 182; his character¬ 
istics as a dramatist, 189-200; 
summary of Greene’s character¬ 
istics as a man and as an author, 
201-205 

Greenes Ghost Haunting Coni- 
catchers, 90 n., 100 n. 

Greenes Vision, 26, 71, 88, 94 n., 
132, 169, 170-172 

Grimald, Nicholas, 134, 148 

Groatsworth of Wit, 48, 59 n., 62- 
65, 72, 73, 80, 139, 145, 170, 
171, 173, 177, 183 


Harman, Thomas, 85 n., 86 n., 
87 n., 91, 92, 93 n. 

Harvey, Gabriel, 2, 74, 79, 105, 
106 

Harvey, Richard, 105,106 
Heliodorus, 35, 38 
Henry VI., 182 

Henslowe, Philip, 178, 179, 188 
Heptameron, 21 

Howard, Philip, Earl of Arundel, 
166 

Howell, Thomas, 139 n. 

Hunting of Cupid, 181 

II Cortegiano, 11, 12, 20 
Isam, Mrs., 4, 79 

James IV., 181-182, 188, 189, 
196-197 

Jamyn, Amadis, 136 

Kind-Harts Dreame, 169 
King Lear, 194 

Knack to Know a Knave, A, 75 n., 
182, 183 

Kyd, Thomas, 32, 189, 190, 201 

La Burza Reale, 169 
Lamb of God, 105 
Laneham } s Letter, 23 n. 

Locrine, 186 

Lodge, Thomas, 75 n.,91,127, 152, 
156, 162, 178, 183, 185 
Longus, 35, 38 

Looking Glasse for London and 
Englande, 177-179, 183 
Love’s Metamorphosis, 25 n. 

Lyly, John, 9, 10, 13, 16, 17, 35, 
45, 46, 64, 69, 75, 138, 189, 
201 


230 


INDEX 


Macbeth, 190 

Maidens Dreame, 142, 149 n., 
172 

Mamillia , 14r-19, 25 n., 33, 66, 
102 n., 164, 189 

Mamillia, The Second Part, 37, 
102 n., 127, 164 

Manifest Detection of Dyce Play, 
89-91, 93 n. 

Marlowe, Christopher, 32, 52, 75, 
133, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 
196, 200 

Martin Marprelate, 167 n. 
Menaphon, 36, 39-42, 45, 48, 53, 
128, 149 n., 155, 156, 168, 176, 
177, 189, 197 

Merrie Conceited Jests of George 
Peele, 110 
Milton, John, 190 
Mirrour of Modestie, 61, 165 
Morando , 21-22, 103 n., 166 
Most Rare and Excellent Dreame, A , 
142, 143, 149 n. 

Mourning Garment, 56-59, 67, 69, 
80, 167, 169, 171, 172, 181 
Mucedorus, 185 

Nashe, Thomas, 2, 4 n., 6, 75, 105, 
168 n., 176, 177, 183 
Never too Late, 27, 59-62, 68, 69, 
71, 77 n., 80, 103 n., 133,140 n., 
169, 171, 172 

News out of Purgatory, 152 
Notable Discovery of Conny-Catch- 
ing, 78 n., 82-83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 
90, 92, 102, 115 
Noyes, Alfred, 151 n. 

Opheltes, 60, 65 

Orlando Furioso, 100, 179-180, 
188, 193-195, 196, 197 


Orpharion, 26, 53, 70, 103 n., 168, 
170, 172 

Painter, William, 11, 16, 108 n. 
Pandosto, 36, 37-39, 45, 48, 66, 
168, 197 

Paradise of Daintie Devices, 140 n., 
146 

Passionate Century of Love, 134 
Paulus Jovius, 185 
Peele, George, 76, 138, 180, 181 
Penelopes Web, 25, 103 n, 167 
Perymedes, 26, 92, 103 n., 167, 168, 
176 

Petite Pallace of Pettie His Pleas¬ 
ure, A, 88 n. 

Pettie, George, 11, 46, 88 n. 
Philomela, 43, 140 n., 172 
Phoenix Nest, 142, 149 n. 
Planetomachia, 25, 29, 88 n., 104, 
166 

Poetical Rhapsody (Davison’s), 
137 n. 

Pontano, his Aegidius, 26 n. 
Primaudaye, his Academy, 22 n., 
23 n., 25 n.; 167 n., 185 
Printemps driver, 180 
Pseudo-Anacreon, 137 

Quippe for an Upstart Courtier, A, 
82,99, 100 n., 101, 106, 121-126, 
173, 193 

Repentance, 3, 66, 72, 76-79, 80, 
170, 171, 173 
Richard III., 190 
Riche, Barnabe, 11, 12 n., 46, 
59 n., 65 n., 127 
Rosalynde, 6, 152 

Rowlands, Samuel, 10, 90 n., 92 n., 
100 n. 

Royal Exchange, 53, 168, 185 


INDEX 


231 


Sannazaro, 127 
Schoolmaster (Ascham’s), 11 
Sdllaes Metamorphosis, 178 
Second Part of Conny-catching, 82, 
83, 85, 86, 87, 89, 91 n., 101, 
102, 172 

Selimus, 182, 184-186, 187 
Shakespeare, William, 32, 76, 136, 
146, 152, 162, 199 
Shepherd’s Calendar, 130 
Sidney, Sir Philip, 75 n., 127, 135, 
152, 156 

Siemowitsch (or Zeimowit), 38 
Spanish Masquer ado, 53,88 n., 168, 
178 

Spanish Tragedy, 32, 194 
Spenser, Edmund, 148 n., 175, 185 
Steel Glas, 148 

Studentes (of Stymmelius), 55, 72 
Summers Last Will and Testament, 
183 

Surrey, Earl of, 134, 148 

Tamburlaine, 167 n., 174 n., 175, 
176, 177, 189, 190, 191, 192, 
193, 194 

Tancred and Gismond, 186 


Tarlton, Richard, 152 
Teares of the Muses, The, 175 
Thirde and Last Part of Conny- 
catching, 82, 83, 92, 99, 100, 
109, 111, 172 

Tompkins the Wheelwright, 28 
Tottel’s Miscellany, 134, 148 
Turberville, George, 134, 146 
Tusser, Thomas, 146 

Underdowne, Thomas, 35 

Visions of Bellay, 148 n. 

Warner, William, 40, 60, 62 n., 65 
Watson, Thomas, 134, 138 n. 
Watteau, 42 
Whetstone, George, 46 
Whittington College, 96 
Whittington, Richard, 96 n. 
Winter's Tale, 39 n. 

Wither, George, 146 
Woman in the Moon, 26 
Wounds of Civill War, 185 
Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 134 

“Young Juvenall,” 75 n., 183 


VITA 


John Clark Jordan was born near Varna, Illinois, on 
November 3, 1883. He attended Knox College in Gales¬ 
burg, Illinois, and received the degree of A. B. from that 
institution in 1908. In 1908-09 he was Assistant in English 
in the University of Illinois, and studied under the direction 
of Professor C. N. Greenough. From 1909 until 1912 he 
was a student in Columbia University. There he pursued 
courses under Professors Thorndike, Fletcher, Spingarn, 
Trent, Ayres, Lawrence, Jespersen, Wright, and Matthews; 
and received the degree of A. M. in February, 1911. Dur¬ 
ing 1912-14 he was Instructor in English in the University 
of Illinois; he is at present Professor of English Literature 
in Drury College, Springfield, Missouri. 








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